


in the shadow of your heart

by joely_jo



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage, F/M, Infidelity, Love, Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2012-12-08
Packaged: 2017-11-16 11:26:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 34,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joely_jo/pseuds/joely_jo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for GoT_exchange’s Comment Fic Meme, for the prompt provided by SomeEnchantedEve and intended as a sequel to her fic <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/398981?hide_banner=true">to stand outside your virtue</a>. </p><p>AU. Her marriage to Brandon is not all that she thought it would be, and Catelyn strikes up a friendship with her good-brother that begins to turn into something more.</p><p>NOW COMPLETE!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SomeEnchantedEve](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomeEnchantedEve/gifts).



It is the dead of night when he realises he needs to leave, and leave now, before he stirs her from her sleep and does something that would dishonour both of them.

So he eases himself from her sleeping grasp and climbs to his feet. They are still laid upon the rug before the hearth, but the fire has long since sunk away to glowing embers and there is a chill in the air. In her sleep, she shivers as he takes away the warmth of his body, making a different kind of guilt prickle at his skin, so he goes to the bed and gathers up a fur and a blanket and lays them gently over her. She shifts and makes a murmuring sound, curling her body into a question mark.

Her mouth is parted slightly, and unbidden, thoughts of what he would like to do to those lips fill his head. She is so very beautiful – he cannot imagine how any man could not be enchanted by her.

For a moment, he wonders what damage it would do if he were to lay back down with her and hold her until dawn. But even as he thinks it, he knows he cannot. He can barely control his thoughts standing here, five feet from her, let alone if he were to have her in his arms again. The night hides his indecision, though, and in its dark embrace he feels safe enough to stand at the door, his hand on the latch, torn between what he knows he must do and what every part of him wants to do.

In the end, it is only through sheer force of will that he lifts the latch and slips away.

At breakfast the next morning, she is there before he is, and she works hard at avoiding his gaze. She drinks her tea and stares long at the smoked kipper and oatcakes on her platter, moving them around until the butter congeals and the food goes cold. He notices that she eats barely a dozen bird-like mouthfuls. Brandon has not yet shown himself, although most of his guests are already nearly finished with their meals. He looks around the hall and sees that Lady Barbrey is not beside her father either, and it is then that Ned realises with a kind of numb shock where his brother doubtless is. His jaw clenches without him even knowing he is doing it and he finds himself also staring at his own untouched plate of food.

And then, Benjen is there, laying a calming hand on his shoulder. “Ned,” he says, and there is a warning in his voice. “Leave him be, won’t you? When he shows his face, he will not thank you for making a scene of it.”

Frowning, he replies, “But it is acceptable to make a scene of me? He announced _just last night_ that Lady Barbrey was to be my wife.” His voice shakes with the effort of holding his anger within.

“I know,” says Ben.

There is no more that can be said, and Ned knows it, so he thanks Benjen for his concern and climbs from his seat, stealing the quickest of final glances at Catelyn, now talking with Maege Mormont, before he leaves.

Feeling in need of some absolution, he goes out to the Godswood and finds the heart tree and sits before it. The prayers come easily, and when he is finished, he stares bitterly at the melancholy face carved into the bone-white bark and thinks that if the Gods know what they are doing, then perhaps he has angered them in some way, to warrant this ill treatment. He closes his eyes and sighs, and the image of her flickers before him, writhing wanton in his lap. His head hurts. He feels like weeping, but even so, he knows he won’t.

He stays there for the longest time, thinking on what has passed, until the sounds and smells of another meal being served drive him from his thoughts and propriety demands that he return to the castle.

Back in the Great Hall, his eyes find Catelyn again, out of habit, and he sees that she is sitting alone at the high table. Their gazes meet and she offers him a small smile, which he returns, and then goes to his own seat. A serving girl with a glossy mane of dark hair comes towards him and places roasted goose on the table nearby. She touches his shoulder deliberately with her hip as she leans across, and then turns and pardons herself, but in her eyes, there is something flirtatious. “Is there anything I can get m’lord?” she asks, her voice lilting a touch. Ned shakes his head, ignoring her, and her face falls and she turns away.

Brandon chooses that moment to make his entrance, striding into the room as if nothing at all is amiss, and raising his hands to draw attention. He calls out, “Forgive me, my friends, for failing to join you all at breakfast. I’m afraid I was otherwise engaged.”

Ned stares at the table. There is a quiet crescendo of talk around the room – no doubt they are all sharing theories about _how_ exactly Brandon was otherwise engaged, but he seems unconcerned with their whisperings. Barbrey Ryswell uses their distraction to slip silently into her seat. She is dressed in burgundy and bronze, her black hair braided intricately atop her head. There is a flush to her cheeks and her eyes are bright. Ned tries to catch her attention across the room, but she looks straight through him and fixes on Brandon instead, who is leaping onto the dais and finding his seat.

Catelyn greets her husband, but he ignores her, reaching instead for a wine cup and taking a deep drink. She turns away, a tiny frown between her haunting blue eyes, and sees him staring at her, blushes, then her eyes skit away again. Brandon calls the Greatjon to the high table and they begin a raucous conversation, punctuated with loud guffaws. The serving girl who had tried her luck with Ned sidles in alongside Brandon, offering to top up his cup and receive a teasing smile and a nod for her efforts. He lays his hand on her arse and squeezes. 

Catelyn eats her meal without so much as another word.

Later, when everything had been cleared away, a singer is brought out and the dancing begins. Brandon is in high spirits, fuelled by several cups of Arbor Gold, and he sweeps up the serving girl from before and swings her out onto the dance-floor. Watching from the sidelines, Ned sees her thrust her chest towards him and laugh wildly. She cannot be more than six and ten, and is as naïve as a child. No doubt she thinks she will win the favour of her lord with her show, but Ned thinks that she is much more like to get a bastard in her belly instead.

“Ned! Come join us!” shouts Brandon as he spins the girl away, his eye already roving through the assembled womenfolk for another to fill his time with.

“No.”

“Why not?” Brandon is grinning, but he quickly catches the tone of Ned’s refusal. “I command it,” he says, with more firmness in his voice. Ned fixes him with a look of contempt and repeats,

“No. I do not want to.”

Brandon sighs. “Always so sombre,” he complains as he comes alongside him. “Why are you ever so sombre?”

“I do not feel like laughing,” replies Ned. Brandon rolls his eyes. He grabs up a wine cup that is not his from the nearby table and takes a swig.

“Well, you’re going to have to become a bit less sombre, brother,” he tells him. “Barbrey was telling me last night that she thinks you are most dull. And she is to be your wife!” Brandon shakes his head. “You’re not giving her the best impression, you know…”

“And you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?” he hisses. “Mayhaps if you spent a little more time with your own wife instead of with the one you intend for me…” The words are out of his mouth before he even realises he has said them, and then instantly, he regrets them, knowing deep down that there is a kind of hypocrisy in them. Brandon’s face darkens. He straightens up to his full height, half a head taller than Ned, and narrows his dark grey eyes so that they become thin like shards of dirty ice. Wheeling about, Ned marches away from him, heading out of the Great Hall and into the courtyard. He says a quick prayer that Brandon will not follow him, but almost immediately he hears his brother’s footsteps ringing sharply on the stones.

He stops before the armoury and waits for Brandon’s ire to break. “My own wife!” he objects. “What are you saying, brother?” Every word stabs like a poniard, but Ned’s wrath is on him now and he turns and for the first time in years, he faces down his brother.

“You know what I am saying,” he blazes. “Catelyn is your wife and yet you treat her with less respect than a common stale.” Brandon opens his mouth to reply, but Ned continues before he has chance to utter a word. “Where is your heir? People are talking, you know. They ask why you have been married nigh on two years and yet there is no sign of a babe. And then they see you cavorting with serving girls and the woman you would choose for _my betrothed_ and they know why!”

“I lay with my wife,” Brandon says acidly. “Just last week, in truth.”

“And who have you laid with since, brother?”

For a moment, Brandon looks appropriately chastised. He stalks to the great oaken door of the armoury and punches the wood with his fist, howling in frustration at the night sky. His back shakes with something that could be anger, then he turns back to Ned and roars, “Do not think to lecture me, Ned!” His voice is loud and mad like a cornered animal. “It is none of your business what I do with my wife, or where I choose to spend my nights. If I wish to bury my cock in every wet cunt from Winterfell to the Wall, it is _my_ decision and it has nothing to do with you. I don’t care if you _are_ my brother, I am your liege lord and you will not presume to speak to me in this fashion.”

He is right in Ned’s face now, bearing down on him. Ned stands his ground for a dozen heartbeats, then hears the growl rumble in Brandon’s chest and knows that he cannot win this one. He sets his face in ice and meets his brother’s steely gaze. “As you wish, _my lord_ ,” he says pointedly.

Brandon’s face twitches, and then he turns away and halts. Across the courtyard, in the doorway of the Great Hall, stands Catelyn, her hand raised to her mouth. She looks anguished at both of them, then turns and flees. In the silence of the empty courtyard, her sob echoes loud.

Brandon’s responding curse is low spoken, but no less audible. He waves his hand dismissively towards the direction in which his wife has fled, then marches back into the Great Hall and away.

Ned stares a moment, then follows after Catelyn.

He finds her in the stables, shadowy in the glow of the torchlight. She is standing before what he assumes must be her horse, a beautiful red mare, with a coat the same colour as Catelyn’s own hair. He does not announce his presence, and yet he can tell that she knows that he is there. She does not turn around though, and instead holds the horse’s face in her hands and strokes its nose absently. “I am sorry, my lady,” he says when she does not greet him. “I did not mean for you to see what you have just seen, or hear the words that were spoken. It was meant to be a private conversation.”

She makes no response and he wonders if she is angry with him. “Cat?” he questions.

When she finally faces him, her eyes are swimming with tears, and he feels a crushing urge to go to her and envelop her in his arms and kiss away the tears. But he knows he should not, and so he stands uselessly there, staring at her. Her tears have turned her eyes to aquamarine and they glimmer at him. “Don’t call me that,” she says, and the crack in her voice widens to a gulf. Her hand curls into a fist and shakes, shakes like a leaf. When it lands hopelessly on his chest, he feels the impact right through to his heart, even though the blow is not hard. “Why do you have to be so damnably kind to me?”

He frowns, her words a confusion to him. “You would have me be cruel to you?”

“Yes,” she sobs, “for it would make it easy to banish these thoughts I have of you from my head.”

There are pale lines running down her cheeks where the tears have tracked, and her eyelashes are glistening with wet. He takes her face in his hands and smoothes away the dampness with his thumbs.

Her lip quivers.

And then he is kissing her. It starts slow but quickly becomes insistent, urgent, swept away. The whole stable block seems to dissolve and they are suddenly somewhere else, in some other time, with none of the barriers that exist around them. His tongue is in her mouth and hers is in his. Their teeth bash. With frantic need he tears at her dress and in return, her hands work at the laces on his breeches. She tugs him free and he is hard and willing in her hands.

There are no thoughts.

He lifts her up and slides her onto him and he gasps at how wet she is. She bites into the leather of his doublet to quiet the cry that almost finds its way free. Her hands are in his hair and she is solid in his arms, as solid as the wall he pushes her up against. His hips rasp into her. She moans a high keening sound and grasps at his shoulders, kneading the muscles there.

It takes no more than a dozen strokes, and then his desire explodes. Even as his seed pumps into her, he thinks that he is glad it has been quick, because had it taken longer, there would have been chance for his sense of honour to have stopped him. As it is, when he pushes into her one last time, the guilt pierces right through him like a blade as his climax ebbs away, replacing passion and fire with the cold, hard knowledge of what has just passed between them. He holds her there, though, and looks into her eyes, and sees the same fear that he knows she can see in his.

 _What have we done?_ He does not say the words, but he knows she hears them nonetheless.

He lowers her to the ground and her skirts fall back down, covering up her sin. His own though, hangs wet and already limp outside his breeches. He hastily tucks himself back in, closes his eyes, drags a pained hand over his face, then begins, “My lady, I--”

“Shh,” she interrupts, and presses a kiss to his bearded cheek. “I know.” Her arms wrap around him and his head rests on her shoulder a moment. The sounds of the stables filter back in, the stamping and the snorting, the rattle of chains. It all seems so achingly normal, even though he feels a little like he has just been somewhere very precious. When he stands back from her, she is smiling – the first smile he has seen on her face since they were together in her rooms. “Tell me,” she says as she fixes him with her jewel-like eyes. “If this is so wrong, why does it--”

“Feel so right?” he concludes for her with a wryly returned smile. “I do not know.” He sighs. “I wish things were different, my lady, I really do… but they are not. In another few months, I will be married, and then this will be even more wrong than it is now.” He pauses and frowns. “This was an accident, no more – just a decline of restraint.” The words sound good – perhaps a little too good – and he hopes she does not take offence.

A tiny frown appears between her eyes. “And that’s what we have to tell ourselves,” she murmurs. He nods.

“It’s for the best.”

“Yes,” she confirms.

But he thinks he hears the shadow of doubt in her words.

The next day, at breakfast, she seems more at ease. Brandon is beside her and Ned keeps his head down, refusing to look as much as anything else. He has not spoken a word to his brother since they argued, and Brandon has barely even glanced at him. The tension is palpable, and every man in Winterfell can feel it. Benjen pulls him aside afterwards and asks him what the matter is, but Ned cannot answer in completeness. He will not dishonour Catelyn so. “We have had a disagreement,” he supplies instead, and Ben accepts this, although Ned has the feeling that he knows exactly what they have quarrelled about.

They are standing talking in the courtyard when Brandon comes from the stables leading a spirited black courser that wheels and prances at the end of its reins. It is a new animal and Ned remembers that Rodrik Ryswell brought it with him when he arrived as a present for his liege lord. Brandon shows the horse’s ill-behaviour no mind – he has mastered far worse. He is dressed showily in grey silken breeches, a tunic of forest-green and highly polished ring-mail, with a fox-fur cloak that hangs down to just above his knees. He looks every inch the handsome high lord. A pair of maids pause in their passage across the yard and whisper together. One of them giggles and Brandon flashes a knowing grin at her, leaving Ned in no doubt that she is yet another of his conquests.

There are snowflakes in the air, floating, and Ned can feel the chill already. Above, the clouds are white and heavy. “I am going for a ride,” Brandon announces to the small group of assembled guests. “Would anyone wish to accompany me?”

When a polite silence greets his words, Barbrey Ryswell steps forward. “My lord, I would very much like to come with you.” She is already wearing riding leathers, which Ned finds highly convenient.

Brandon flashes a smile at her and calls for the stable boy to bring Lady Barbrey’s horse. “My lady, it would be an honour to have you in the party.” He turns then to Ned and the smile is gone. “Ned, come with us…” he says. It is almost an order, but not quite, and Ned thinks that while ever it is not, he will refuse.

“No, thank you,” he replies.   _I would not wish to be in the way_ , he adds silently. With a curt nod, Brandon accepts his refusal, and mounts up. His horse gives a half-rear; Brandon tugs hard on the reins to bring the animal down and heads towards the Hunter’s Gate at a trot. The stable boy arrives with Lady Barbrey’s mount and the dark-haired beauty swings into the saddle. Flicking her head, she takes off after Brandon.

“Try not to think on it,” says Ben as Ned watches them leave. He can feel the eyes of the group upon him, and their pity is as painful as a thumb screw.

“Yes,” he agrees bitterly. “I’m sure that will help.”

He walks away.

The Godswood is quiet. The snow has begun to fall heavier now and fat, fluffy flakes land and stick. Soon the ground will be covered and the world will turn to white – _the way Winterfell is supposed to look_ , he thinks. He walks without direction for a while, then realises that there is only one thing that he needs and heads back towards the heart tree.

It surprises him to see her there, seated on the rock he often sits upon, and he wonders if it would be right to turn his back on her and pretend he has not seen her, but before the thought is fully formed in his mind, she looks up. “I had hoped I would find you here,” she says quietly. She is bundled beneath a thick wolf skin cloak – a gift from Brandon from before their marriage – and has the hood up, leaving her face in shadow. Ned approaches cautiously. She has a dangerous look about her, and he wonders why she has sought him out here. She has told him before of how the place unnerves her.

“I came to offer my prayers,” he explains simply.

There are still a few paces between them when she stands. He catches a glimpse of a few enticing tendrils of red hair beneath her hood. “I have been thinking,” she continues, “and there is something I would wish to say to you.” She pauses and Ned opens his mouth. He does not want to hear any more of her apologies for what happened in the stables – he has chastised himself for his weakness enough already. “Shh…” she says. She reaches out and presses her finger to his lips, lingering just a moment longer than she probably should, before her hand falls to her side.

“My lady, I--” he tries again, but she cuts him off.

“I love you,” she blurts.

Ned stares at her, aghast. In the silence of the Godswood, her voice sounds unnaturally loud; he glances around nervously in case anyone has heard. And then her words rush out in a passion of communication, desperate and neglected. “I’ve been in love with you for months. I don’t even know when it happened, but… I can’t stop thinking about you.” She fixes him with an intense look. “I want you – day and night. Just standing here in front of you is making my heart hammer like it’s fit to burst…”

She stops and Ned realises that there are tears swimming in her eyes again and he feels something strange and powerful clutch at him. “Please…” he begs. “Don’t do this… We cannot. We must not.”

But she ignores him and throws herself into his arms and he can’t stop himself from holding her then. He can feel the tension in her shoulders and back and the shaking as it begins deep down inside. His hand finds its way to the top of her head, hovers for a moment, before beginning to stroke and soothe. When eventually she pulls back and her mouth finds his, he offers no further resistance and simply melts into her, mouth open and urgent.  

Somewhere a horn sounds.

It takes a second blast before Ned breaks away and cocks his head in the direction of the sound. Catelyn is still clinging to him. Her lips are red from their kissing and her face is flushed. “What is that?” she manages to ask, frowning.

“The guard tower,” he says. “Two long blasts.”

“What does that mean?”

He does not answer, but instead grabs her hand and begins to walk quickly in the direction of the castle. “Ned?” she asks again, and there is uneasiness in her tone. “What is it?”

He stops and turns to her. “It means help is needed.”

“Help?” She stares at him, bewildered, but then he is striding off again and she picks up her skirts and runs to keep up with him.

When they slip through the gate and into the snowy courtyard, there is a crowd of people already gathered. Lady Barbrey’s horse is loose and two stable boys are attempting to catch it. Down one of its flanks is a dark smear of mud and its eyes are white and wild. Ned pushes through the throng and sees his betrothed in the centre. She is filthy with mud as well and her hair is half pulled free from its knot. Her face is paler than milkglass. Men are already peeling off the group and the voices are growing in fervour – a cry goes out to fetch the Maester.

“My lady,” he demands above the din. “What has happened?”

For the first time since she has arrived, Barbrey Ryswell looks directly at him, and the expression in her eyes chills him to the bone. “Eddard!” she calls. “It’s Brandon. There’s been an accident…”   


	2. Chapter 2

At her words, Ned’s stomach falls away. A hundred different chilling scenarios run through his head at the same time, each one clamouring for attention. “An accident?” he questions. He takes her by the arms; she twists slightly in his grasp, trying to get away. He can feel the panic thrumming through her. “My lady, tell me… what has happened?”

Her face is the colour of bone.

“His horse…” Her hands are circling vaguely. “He’s fallen. Why is nobody doing anything? We need to get to him – _now_!”

The frantic sound of her voice puts a fear into Ned. He straightens and shouts out, “Jory, Hullen, get the horses… Where’s Maester Luwin?”

The maester comes hurrying into the courtyard just as the words are out of Ned’s mouth, his grey robes billowing behind him. “My lord,” he says simply and bows his head.

“There’s been an accident,” Ned explains as briefly as he can. “My brother has been hurt. We are riding to where he is. Mount up.”

When the horses are brought out, Ned throws himself into the saddle. Luwin is no horse rider, but Hullen helps him into the saddle and hands him his bag of medicines. “Lady Barbrey, are you fit to accompany us?” Ned asks. “We will find him quicker if we have a reliable guide.” Some colour has come back to her face now and she nods and climbs onto her own horse. He turns his mount and glances at Catelyn, who has been standing a little away from the fussing crowd, the flurrying snow swirling around her. She is silent. There is no expression upon her face, yet Ned can read the tension beneath her skin, the tightness in her shoulders. She meets his gaze and he nods. “My lady,” he says. “Try not to worry.”

Benjen is beside her. He puts his hand on her back and looks at Ned. “I’ll stay with her,” he tells him.

“Thank you, brother.” And with that, Ned puts his heels into his horse and gallops away.

They find him on the other side of a stone wall, a couple of leagues north of the castle, in the sprawling wild of the Wolfswood. His horse is nowhere to be seen and as Barbrey pulls her horse up, Ned realises just how quiet the place is. There isn’t even any birdsong. He swings down from his mount and they approach. “We were galloping along the path,” explains Barbrey. “His horse was spooky, but he had him under control. And then we came to this wall; he was in front and he jumped it and…”

She stops. It is not necessary to explain any further as Ned sees and understands exactly what has happened as he walks closer. On the other side of the wall, the hidden landing slopes away sharply and is a good deal lower than the take-off side. The ground is wet and soft and the turf has slipped, puckered, and the resulting instability has upset the horse’s landing and caused a fall. He can see where the animal hit the ground.

Brandon is lying on his back, but from his muddied face and chest it is immediately clear that he has been rolled there, presumably by Barbrey. The angle of his right arm is all wrong; Ned does not need the maester to tell him that it is broken; but it is the indentation on his temple that is most concerning. The skull is sunken in and leaking blood. He has been struck by something – a hoof or a rock from when he fell.

Maester Luwin struggles down from his horse and crouches beside Brandon. But Ned knows even before the little grey man looks up at him and shakes his head.

Brandon is dead.

Barbrey crumples to her knees. “No! No, no, no…” she cries.

“I am sorry, my lord,” says Luwin, looking up at Ned. “There is nothing I can do. He has no pulse. And that head wound…” His voice trails away, and suddenly, everyone goes quiet until the only sound is the sound of Barbrey’s sobbing. Jory is holding her, but his eyes, like everyone else’s, are fixed on the body of their lord, lying dead in the mud.

A moment passes, hanging, and then it as if time restarts again.

Ned swallows, a cold numbness settling over him, and he can’t help but think that the last words he said to his brother were bitterly spoken. “We need to get him back to Winterfell,” he says quietly. “I want him carried back with dignity. Jory, can you ride back to the castle with Lady Barbrey and then bring back a wagon and some more men? I would wish to give him an honour guard on his return home.” Jory nods and replies,

“Of course, my lord.” He helps Barbrey remount and the two of them head back in the direction of Winterfell.

When they are but figures in the distance, Ned turns to Hullen. “We need to find the horse he was riding, too. Hullen, can you gather some riders to search for it. It seemed rather skittish and it may be injured.”

“Yes, my lord,” replies the master-of-horse. He turns to the two men who have accompanied them and says, “You heard Lord Eddard, get going! M’lord,” he adds, looking at Ned. They are almost alone now, but even so Hullen speaks with a confidential tone. “The horse was a gift from Lord Ryswell. I tried to tell Lord Brandon that the animal was headstrong – wild, even – and it needed training, but he would not have it. He said Lady Barbrey would be offended if he did not ride the animal.”

Frowning, Ned looks him. “Brandon was inclined to do as he willed, I’m afraid.”

“Yes, m’lord,” says Hullen, but it is clear that he is biting his tongue.

“Say what’s on your mind, Hullen,” Ned instructs him.

“Yes, m’lord.” The master-of-horse glances down at the ground. “It’s just that normally Lord Brandon trusted my judgements on animals… I’m sorry for this – I feel part to blame.”

With a sigh, Ned looks at the body lying before him. It barely even looks like Brandon really, he thinks. “This was none of your doing. Unfortunately, I think Lord Brandon was rather more inclined to want to please Lady Barbrey than listen to any words of advice you might have had to offer him.”

Hullen nods, then turns away and remounts his own horse. “I will assist my men with their search, then, m’lord,” he says.

“Yes… thank you…” replies Ned, distantly. Once Hullen has left, Ned goes to Brandon’s body and kneels down beside him. One hand reaches out and touches the wound on his head. The blood is already drying and sticky beneath his fingers. Since they were boys, Brandon had always bragged that he would die by the sword – it seems almost cruel that it should instead be from a mere fall from a horse.

Maester Luwin, who has remained silent, chooses that moment to say, “My lord, you know what this means, do you not?”

Ned looks up at him. The maester’s face is grave. He nods. He knows, but he has been studiously trying to ignore the fact.   

Brandon has no heir.

“Winterfell is yours now, my lord.”

“Yes,” replies Ned, distantly.

“You will need to take care of the Lady Catelyn, my lord,” says Luwin. “But elsewise, you are now the Lord of Winterfell.”

_The Lord of Winterfell._ It is something Ned had never believed would come to him. He is the second son, the quiet one, the boy who would forever be in the shadow of his much brighter brother. It has never been meant for him.

“I am no high lord,” he murmurs. He stands and straightens his doublet, turning away from Brandon’s lifeless form. “It is not in me to rule.”

Maester Luwin tilts his grey head on one side and studies him thoughtfully. “Perhaps it feels that way at this moment, but in time… in time, I think you will prove the best of lords and the best of rulers.”

Shaking his head, Ned goes to his horse and distractedly checks its saddle and bridle. The weight of Luwin’s words sits heavy on him to the point of painfulness. He thinks suddenly of Catelyn. She is just twenty and now the widow of a high lord. If her life was sore before, he wonders what it is to bring her now. “You should ride back to Winterfell. The news will have broken now and Lady Catelyn and Lady Barbrey may be in need of you. I will wait beside him until the others return.”

Luwin nods. “As you wish, my lord.”

It is nearly sundown and the sky is bleeding red and pink when the wagon carrying Brandon’s body trundles across the drawbridge, surrounded by an honour guard of six men, and led by Ned himself. Greycloaks line the way and the quiet cuts like a knife. The snowfall has slowed to just a few feathery flakes that float through the air. As they pass into the courtyard, the hooves of their horses ringing loud on the ground, Ned sees Catelyn standing half-hidden by the crowds of watchers. Her face is pale and her eyes rimmed with red. She does not meet his gaze, but instead keeps her eyes fixed on the wagon and a frown furrows her brow. Several of her handmaidens stand beside her, and as Ned reins up his horse and those behind him halt, one of them lays a hand on her shoulder and squeezes.

Brandon’s body is carried from the wagon amid stinging silence. No-one speaks a word; it seems not even a breath is taken. Maester Luwin orders the body taken from the wagon and to the Great Hall. Ned knows he understands that it will be laid out for the remaining Stark brothers to stand vigil over – until the sun rises on a new day is traditional in the North – and then the body will be interred in the cold stone crypts beneath Winterfell, where every other Stark lord, and Lyanna, lie.

Ned slides down from his horse. Benjen is suddenly there beside him, his face dark and sorrowful, and without a word, he embraces him. With his arms around him, Ned draws a long breath in and out again, feeling the tension ripple and shift inside him. Finally, Benjen breaks away and Ned notices that there are tears glistening in his eyes. No words are necessary and the two of them turn together and follow Brandon’s body into the Great Hall.

All through the night they stand there, swords in hand, while Winterfell sleeps around them. By the time midnight passes, the strains of the last few days are filling up Ned’s bones with tiredness from his toes to the top of his skull. He thinks Benjen may have snatched a few moments of sleep while still standing, his back leaning against the huge oak table upon which they have laid the body, but Ned cannot do the same – his brain is too full of thoughts to permit it.

He thinks of Winterfell, of Brandon, and of Barbrey… but most of all, he thinks of Catelyn. The image of her hooded and cloaked in the Godswood drifts in his mind’s eye, the words she had spoken echoing loudly through his head. It would have been so easy to affirm her love, he thinks. He looks down at his brother’s body laid out on the table and not for the first time in his life, curses him quietly. Had Brandon not arranged his betrothal to Lady Barbrey before he died, it would not have been unexpected for him to have married Catelyn in his brother’s place. But with the betrothal now arranged, he is honour bound to uphold it. He closes his eyes and sighs.

The fire dies down and then the cold begins to creep into the hall. It is slow and insidious, but it isn’t long before it turns Ned’s feet to blocks of ice and his fingers start to lose sensation. He curls and uncurls them around the hilt of his longsword, and shifts his position every so often, but it does little to combat the feeling of being slowly frozen. When the first weak rays of dawn light begin to filter through the windows, his body seems as if it is not even his own, numb from standing so long in one place.

The castle is still silent and sleeping as Catelyn slips into the hall. She looks as tired as he feels and there are dark shadows beneath her eyes. He wonders if she has slept a wink. In her hands, two cups steam vigorously. “Ned,” she murmurs, “Benjen… The sun is up. I thought you would be cold, so I’ve brought you cups of hot almond milk.” Ned can smell the rich, sweet smell as she passes the cups over. He smiles in gratefulness at her and takes a sip. Benjen does the same while a look of relief passes over his face.

“Thank you, my lady,” says Benjen. “It has been a long night.”

She nods, her eyes briefly meeting Ned’s, then she steps closer to Brandon’s body. Last night, Maester Luwin had tidied up the wound on his head and wiped the blood away, but his face is still purpled with a vicious bruise. She reaches out and tentatively touches his cheek with the gentlest of strokes from the back of her forefinger. “I never thought he would die this way,” she says after a moment. Neither Benjen nor Ned reply. “I knew he was reckless at times, and that he rode too fast and often without heed, but he always seemed to know his horses so well. It was like they were an extension of his person.”

“It was an accident,” says Ned softly. “If it could have prevented, it was not by any of us.”

Catelyn stands back from the table, then draws in a deep breath. “You will wish to have his body interred today, I presume?”

“That is the tradition in the North, yes,” Ned replies.

“I would like to help with the arrangements, if I can.”

“Of course, my lady.”

A moment passes. Benjen drains his cup, and runs his hands through his hair. “Please excuse me,” he says to them both. “I am going to my rooms. I am in need of a hot bath and a change of garb.” Catelyn takes his empty cup from him and he thanks her once again before walking out of the hall door. Once he is gone, Ned steps closer to her, until there are just a few short inches between them. 

“Did you sleep?” he asks, his head bowed towards hers, his voice barely above a whisper.

She shakes her head. “Mayhaps an hour or two, just before dawn, but no more.” Pausing, she rubs her eyes and then looks up at him. There is sorrow in her eyes and he feels his heart squeeze painfully in his chest at the sight of it. “A widow at twenty,” she murmurs. “Had we still been at war, it would not have been so strange, but now it is--”

“I swear you will not go wanting, my lady.”

A small smile lifts the corners of her lips. “Why, thank you, my lord,” she says, but there is a touch of sarcasm in her words. “But I fear what I want and what you will give me are two very different things.”

Ned looks guiltily at Brandon, wondering if the dead can hear what is said when they are gone.

“That is a truth,” he says.

She looks down at the ground, nodding, and he thinks she is trying to keep her emotions in check. The light glimmers off her auburn hair. A tremendous urge to reach out and enfold her in his arms comes over him, but he resists, keeping his arms pinned resolutely to his sides – it pains him though, to do so. Swallowing the lump in his throat, Ned puts one hand on his own chest and presses hard. It feels as if something has grabbed hold of his heart and is trying to yank it out of his body. He raises his head towards the ceiling and curses, “Gods be good! Cat, I cannot do this… I cannot have you here in Winterfell and keep my honour intact. I am not strong enough.” He sighs, spinning away and marching a few paces from her, then turns back and looks at her firmly. “There is only one thing for it – you must return to Riverrun.”

She looks at him, shocked, with what can only be terror in her eyes. “No…” she says quietly, and the tears well up in her eyes. “I won’t leave you.”

“You have to.” He goes to her and places his hands on her shoulders, his voice softer now, “I am sorry, my lady. I wish it could be some other way.” The words sound hollow and hopeless.

“But it can!” she cries. “You are the Lord of Winterfell now. You can choose your own bride.”

“Would that I could, my lady, but you forget that I am betrothed to Lady Barbrey. I must honour that betrothal, elsewise I risk offending the Ryswells, and they have been leal bannermen of House Stark for hundreds of years. It would not do to lose their support.” He shakes his head and then looks sadly at Brandon. “This changes little, I’m afraid.”

Pleadingly, she appeals to him with her eyes, but when he does not grant her any response, she seems to blink, and blink, and then she steels herself and straightens. Her face goes blank, as if she is trying to banish every emotion in her soul in the hope of keeping control of herself. “If you are certain this is how it must be…” She looks to him for confirmation, and he gives an unwilling nod.

“I must go,” he says, “There are many things to attend to before the day is done.” He studies the lines of her face, thinking that if he looks carefully, he will be able to commit them to memory well enough for him to be able to recall her face at will. “When today is over, take a cup of wine with me?”

Silently, she nods, even as her eyes fill again with unbidden tears. She says nothing as he takes up her hands and plants kisses on her knuckles, then turns and walks away.

They carry Brandon’s body down to the Winterfell crypts later that day and inter his body in the empty sepulchre already set aside for him. Ned stands at the head of the small gathering of mourners, feeling the guilt gnaw at him – his last words to Brandon should not have be sullen and in anger.

When it is all over and done with and the stonemason has been charged with sealing the tomb and carving a likeness of Brandon, Ned thinks that his exhaustion is enough to overwhelm him. But still there are guests to entertain. Although many have already left, wishing to give the family time alone to grieve, some have stayed, including the Ryswells, and as the shadows grow long, and Ned finally sits down at the table to eat his first meal of the day, Rodrik Ryswell comes towards him.

“My lord,” he says, bowing his head before Ned. He is dressed formally in a dark tunic with the horse head sigil of his house embroidered upon it, woollen breeches and riding boots of shining brown leather. A man in his late forties, Lord Ryswell has fared well for his age, maintaining a slim and athletic figure despite his years. Ned nods a polite greeting to him. “I extend my deepest sympathies for your loss,” he continues. “I was grievous sad to learn of Lord Brandon’s untimely death. Such a young man…” He shakes his head. For a moment Ned considers dismissing him, but he senses that Ryswell has more to say.

“It is a sorry thing,” acknowledges Ned.

“And yet, now we must consider the consequences.” There is a loaded pause after Lord Ryswell’s words, wherein he looks at Ned with eyes harder than stone. “You are now the Lord of Winterfell.”

Ned sighs; he knows then what words are to come. “Do not concern yourself, Lord Ryswell,” he says. “I intend to still honour the marriage contract arranged between our families.”

Ryswell smiles in open relief. “I am pleased to hear it, my lord, truly. My sweet Barbrey was made quite ill by the loss of Lord Brandon, but the news that she shall now be Lady of Winterfell has brought her out of her grief.”

Ned fixes the Lord of the Rills with a cynical stare. Rodrik Ryswell’s repeated badgering of Lord Rickard to make a match between their houses had been a constant of Ned’s youth – but this seems a good deal more calculating than any conversation that has come before. “I am sorry for Lady Barbrey’s sadness. I know she was close to my brother.”

“Yes,” says Ryswell. “But she knows her duty, as I am sure you do also.” He pauses. “She will make you a good wife, my lord. In a few months, when you are all done with your grief, we must meet again to arrange the finer details of the marriage.”

“Yes,” replies Ned.

“I shall take my leave of you until then, my lord,” says Ryswell, “as it seems we are of an understanding. However, my daughter has asked to remain in Winterfell with you – she wishes to spend a little more time with you. Would this be acceptable?”

“Lady Barbrey wishes to stay in Winterfell?” Ned cannot hide the tone of surprise from his voice – he had thought his betrothed cared little for him.

“She is keen to know you better, my lord. With all that has happened, she feels she has neglected you since your betrothal and wishes to rectify that.”

Ned thinks he hears Lord Ryswell’s intention loud and clear. He means to leave his daughter under Ned’s nose to serve as a constant reminder of the debt that is owed him. Ned chuffs a response. “I was under the impression that Lady Barbrey was not endeared of me.”

“Not true, my lord. She considers you an honourable man who does not go back on his words. As do I.”

And then he is gone, with another bow and a smile, and Ned realises despondently that the trap has been set and laid for him and that there will be no getting free from it now. He turns back to the meal that has been placed before him, his appetite all but vanished. With a sigh, he spears a chunk of pork belly, swipes it in the rich apple sauce and pushes it into his mouth.

The evening concludes but Ned remains in the Great Hall until long after most have retired to bed. He is pouring himself another cup of wine when Benjen pulls up a seat beside him and plucks the cup away from him. “What are you doing?” Ned demands, reaching, only to have Ben hold it out of his grasp.

“I think you’ve had enough, brother.”

Ned casts a look of passing loathing at Benjen, but submits and his hand falls away. The only men left in the hall are members of the Winterfell household: a couple of kitchen girls still clearing away, a group of grey-cloaked men-at-arms gambling with dice at the far end, and Hullen, who sits in deep conversation with one of the new lads recently hired to work in the armoury. Catelyn attended only briefly and left hours ago, and Ned was glad of it – while ever she was in the room, he had found it almost impossible to keep his eyes from shifting towards her. 

For a long moment, the two of them sit in silence, then Ben says softly, “I hear Rodrik Ryswell was laying out his cards earlier.”

“Yes,” replies Ned with a bitter tone. “I think he suspects I will not keep to the betrothal with his daughter.”

“He is an ambitious man, isn’t he? I remember Father cursing him at times for his persistence.”

Down the hall, one of the men-at-arms gets up from the table with a heated curse and throws a handful of coins at another, before marching out of the hall in a fury. “He is only looking after his own interests,” Ned allows, when the distraction has passed, although he thinks that Ben is right in his assessment that Rodrik Ryswell’s interests extend further than most men’s.     

“You mean to honour the betrothal?”

“I have little choice, it seems,” says Ned quietly. “Although I confess that the thought hardly fills me with joy. Marrying her while Brandon was alive was unsettling enough, but now it seems even more of a torment. I’ve seen her about the castle today, tears in her eyes and dressed all in black. She has hardly kept her feelings about him hidden.” Ben says nothing, only nods in understanding. “So you see why I was filling up my wine cup. I am bone tired, but yet I fear I may not sleep well tonight.”

With some reluctance, Ben hands Ned back the wine cup and offers him a wry smile. “No more than this, though,” he tells him, rising. “And you should at least try to get some sleep. You look like you’ve been through all seven of the hells.”

Ned tries to smile back at his brother, but his heart is not in the gesture; in the end, he just nods. “Thank you for your concern.”

“That part comes without cost,” says Ben as he claps a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

So Ned sits there until his cup is empty again, and he is alone, then gets up. A touch unsteady on his feet from the wine, he heads out of the hall, stopping to extinguish the last still-flickering candles and the torches burning by the door. In the sudden depth of darkness, his chambers seem a long way off.

He is standing at her door before he even realises he has swayed from his intended destination.  For a long moment he pauses there, one hand pressed to the wood, before he begins to turn away, and then the door opens, and she is there, carrying a candle against the dark. “My lord?” she questions. She is in her nightgown, and her beautiful auburn hair is free and loose about her shoulders. He cannot look away. “I thought there was someone here… I--”

“I am sorry if I frightened you,” he starts.

“I am not scared now. Come inside…”

Ned hesitates, his heart warring with his head, but weakly follows her within. He hears her close the door behind and set down the candle. Shadows flicker and lurch around the room. The remnant of a fire burns still in the hearth, a mound of hot coals glowing redly, as he turns to face her. “I meant to go away,” he admits.

“I did not mean to open the door.”

“But you did.”

“And you didn’t go away,” she concludes.

They stare at one another, and then, almost as if she can feel his distress, she goes wordlessly to him and wraps her arms around him. He feels her long-fingered hands stroking his back, soothing, and he allows some of the tension to leave him in a sigh; his head rests on her shoulder. Eventually, though, propriety intrudes and he stands back a pace, the old guilts biting at him once again.

“I have cups and wine if you would like, my lord,” she murmurs.

“I would gladly say yes, my lady, but I fear I have probably drunk enough.” He looks around the room. Though he was here but a few nights before, he can hardly remember a thing about it other than… He clears his throat as his thoughts begin to wander. “Mayhaps if we sit awhile together?”

“That would be pleasant, yes.” He notices that she is bare-footed and when she shivers as she sits in one of the high-backed chairs before the fire, he goes to the bed, picks up a fur and drapes it about her shoulders. “Thank you,” she whispers.

Ned, however, feels anything but cold – his blood seems almost on fire as he watches her snuggling into the fur. She seems quite girlish in that moment, and not at all like a widowed woman.

That thought brings to mind Riverrun and Winterfell, and the hundreds of leagues between the two castles, and a wave of sadness breaks over him. He does not want to say goodbye to her.

But right now, the need he had felt so strongly this morning to put her away from him seems non-existent. The wine has made him bold… and heedless. “I shall miss you,” he confesses.

“And I, you…” After a long moment of quiet, she adds, “We… we can still be friends though?”

 “Of course, my lady.”

“And when friends are about to be separated, they like to spend the little time that remains to them close to each other.”

“Yes.”

She hugs her legs and meets his gaze. Her eyes sparkle in the candlelight. Silence hangs between them, leaden with the thoughts that neither of them gives voice to. He thinks back to the long evenings they have spent in one another’s company, he telling her tales of Winterfell’s past, she listening with patient ears. He wonders when he first began to think of her as a friend, and when those thoughts changed to become something more. He cannot recall. It seems as if they have always been friends, as if they have always shared some deeper connection.

He cannot imagine his life without her in it.

Leaning forwards, he takes up her hand and encloses it in his own. It seems suddenly quite fragile. He sinks slowly out of his chair and kneels on the rug before her, looking up at her. “Cat, if I could look at you and think of you as just a friend, I would have no hesitation in keeping you here at Winterfell. You are more than that, though, and therein lies the problem.” A sigh gushes out of him.

She looks at their joined hands, and then she pulls them free and cups his face. There is an invitation in her eyes, he thinks, and he is contemplating accepting it (after all, what is one further indiscretion when they have already crossed the line before?) when she kisses him. Her lips are feather light and tentative, and it would be easy for him to pull away, but he does not. Instead, he opens his mouth to her and absorbs her into him, and it feels a little like he has been deprived of something he finds now in abundance. He feels greedy with wanting.

Pushing up from the floor, he gathers her in his arms and carries her to the bed. He crawls above her and settles between her thighs, his hands skating over the thin material of her nightgown, feeling the curves beneath it.

He looks down at her and a moment stretches. Honour is a binding thing, he thinks, except when you hold the woman you love in your arms.  


	3. Chapter 3

Brandon is three weeks buried when Catelyn realises that she has missed her moon blood.

It is in her chambers, when she has arisen early to continue the painful process of packing up her things for the long journey to Riverrun, that the thought suddenly occurs to her, and she stops dead, a shawl drooping from her hands. Since she was a girl, her months have always been regular, and now it seems that she is more than a week overdue. She sits on the edge of the bed and tries to count back on her fingers, but she is shaking so much, the thoughts will not stay focused.

Her last bleeding was before Brandon had filled the castle with guests, when they were preparing for the feast, and that is more than five weeks gone.

Five weeks.

The thought leaves her cold, because even as she adds up the figures in her head a second time, she knows that Brandon last came to her chambers to take his pleasure when she was bleeding and that, since then, Ned is the only…

Her stomach flips and sickness gushes over her. Gods be good, she thinks, _oh, Gods be good!_

She is carrying Ned’s child.

Shakily, she gets to her feet and stares in desperation around the room, her head in a wild tumult of thoughts. She has to find him.

It is not more than an hour or two past dawn and the sky is layered thick with grey cloud. There is a mithering wind blowing too, that catches petulantly at her skirts as she hurries across the courtyard. Hullen is watching a lame horse trot towards him, and when he sees her, he nods and acknowledges her, “M'lady.”

“Good morrow, Hullen. Have you seen Lord Eddard?”

“He was in his solar with the maester last I knew. You’re looking a little pale, m'lady, if you don’t mind me saying. Are you well?” The horse has come to a halt right in front of him and he steps around it to speak to her directly. She smiles at him as best she can.

“It’s just the cold wind. It always takes the colour from my cheeks.”

She takes the steps to his solar two at a time and knocks hard on the door. Ned’s voice sounds from within, a sharp and succinct ‘Come!” that makes him sound much older than his years. As she bursts through the door, she sees Maester Luwin sitting before Ned, the huge oaken desk with the Stark sigils carved into the corners between them. Both men are startled by her entrance; Ned looks up and frowns and Luwin gets to his feet. “My lady,” says Ned. “Is there some problem?” No doubt he can read the fear on her face – he has always been able to see right through her.

Catelyn stares at the maester and says nothing. Foolishly, she hadn’t given any thought to what she would do if Ned was not alone, and now she stumbles over her words. “I, um, I… I’m sorry, my lord, I wished to speak with you about something. But… it can wait. I did not think you would be busy at this early hour.”

Ned’s eyes meet hers, searching for something more than the polite words she has just spoken aloud. Maester Luwin gestures towards the door. “I can take my leave, my lady, if you would wish to speak with Lord Eddard alone?” For a moment, Catelyn hesitates, and her hesitation proves enough to convince the maester that whatever she needs to speak about is important. He turns to Ned. “My lord, we can continue our discussion later…”

“Yes, thank you,” says Ned. Luwin offers a smile at Catelyn, then exits through the still-open door. Ned rises from his seat and comes around to stand in front of her. “My lady, what is it? You are shaking.”

“Shut the door, Ned,” she tells him. He does so, and then turns back to her, his head tilted in question. Suddenly, she feels overwhelmed and a little faint; and indeed she must be looking unsteady for Ned takes her by the arms and guides her to a chair. She sits and takes in a calming breath. There is nothing for it but to say it plainly. “I have missed my moon blood.”

At first, there is silence, but as the full import of her words registers, Ned’s face drains. His eyebrow twitches almost imperceptibly. “Perhaps it is just as a result of the stress you have been under,” he suggests, although she can hear the doubt prickling in his voice; he does not really believe the words himself. She shakes her head.

“Ever since I flowered, I have always bled at the same time every month. There is no mistake.” She swallows the lump that has risen in her throat. “I am with child.”

“With child…” Ned repeats. He stares at her for a moment, then turns away and goes to the window, looking out onto the courtyard below. She does not think he is really watching what is out there, though, as his eyes are distant and unfocused. Finally, he says, “Is there a chance the babe could be Brandon’s?”

Shaking her head again, Catelyn murmurs, “Little.”

“Gods,” he says, turning back to her. His eyes glance down at her middle. “What are we going to do? People will think it is Brandon’s... and the rightful heir to Winterfell.”

The idea, unthought-of before, is like a blade pressed to her throat. “A babe in arms?” she asks incredulously.

“Yes,” affirms Ned. “Age matters not. This is the North, Cat. A rightful claim is all. I am only Lord of Winterfell while ever Brandon has no heir.” He looks out of the window again. A long moment passes before he turns back to her. “You are certain about this?”

“As certain as I can be.” She wants him to come to her, to offer her some comfort, but he does not, staying remote from her, across the room. Abruptly, she wonders if he is thinking of moon tea and forced miscarriages and tears bud up in her eyes – the world might think of this babe as Brandon’s, but she knows the truth. And the truth makes her covetous. An overpowering need to guard this little part of him that she has been gifted with fills her up. “Do not say that you are thinking of moon tea,” she pleads in a quiet, desolate voice.

Ned turns sharply and frowns at her. “Moon tea? My lady, I would not ever suggest such a thing…” He goes to her, kneels in front of her, takes her hands in his and gives them a squeeze. He looks to her belly and he reaches out to lay a hand on it. “My babe,” he murmurs. Catelyn covers his hand with her own. Their eyes meet. A tiny smile plays on his lips, then spreads to become a grin that seems so strange and unfamiliar upon his sombre face. “Twice we have lain together, and this is the result.”

She finds herself smiling back at him, and a small laugh at the unlikeliness of it all bubbles out. “Mayhaps the Gods approved.”

“Mayhaps,” he agrees. And then his face darkens. “But damn him… Brandon must get even this one.” He sighs, sits back on his heels, and shakes his head, as if resigning himself to his fate of ever being trapped by his elder brother.

“Why can we not tell the truth?” she asks him. In that moment, it seems like a plausible option, and it appeals to the desire for honesty that has long existed within her. Ned seems unconvinced, though, by her suggestion, and tells her so.

“If only it were that simple, Cat. Your husband is not long buried. People will know that the babe was brought to you while you were still married to Brandon. If we were to let the truth be known, your honour… and mine own, would be sullied and--”

“Brandon has already seen to the sullying of my honour, Ned,” she interrupts.

He ignores her comment and continues, “And in the eyes of the world, the babe would be a bastard.”

 “A bastard?” The word catches her like a knife even though she knows the truth of it. They are not married and a babe born outside of wedlock is a bastard.

“Yes.” His voice is firm. “And what would you have him be? The next Lord Stark of Winterfell or a bastard with the name Snow?”

She thinks back to the rumours that circulated after the Rebellion of Ned Stark bringing home with him from the South a bastard babe born to a mystery woman. She has never seen the boy, but the rumours have persisted, and Ned has never denied them. “You already have a bastard,” she argues.

“I do. But that means that I also know better than most about what it means to be a bastard. Jon will grow up in the safety of my protection, but he will never inherit my lands or title and he will be scorned for much of his life. He is unfortunate in that he has no other choice. This child does.”

Catelyn senses the hopelessness of their dilemma in his grey eyes and a little part of her heart breaks anew. However much she loves him, she has to think hard. She cannot deny her child an inheritance like that.

Ned seems to read the surrender in her face. His thumbs run gently over the backs of her hands in comfort. “We should announce it sooner, rather than later, for there will be some discussion to be had. I suppose until the babe is born, we must continue as we are. No-one can object to that. But, one thing is for certain – you must stay in Winterfell. It would not do to send you back to Riverrun now.”

That news makes her briefly rejoice, but even then it is tempered with sadness. “And then?”

“And then I will leave you and return to my holdfast, and you must govern the North until the child comes of age.”

“Oh, Ned, please… no…” She looks at him beseechingly. Just when she had thought she was going to get to keep him near, he takes himself away again. “I cannot rule the North. I am a Tully, a Southron girl – in their eyes I do not have the mettle!”

He lays his hands on her shoulders. “You do,” he tells her and gives her a little shake. “You are well-liked, the men of the household respect you, and they will follow you if they know you are the mother of the next Lord Stark of Winterfell.” Squeezing her shoulders gently, he adds, “And I will always come to your aid should you need me.”    

She doesn’t tell him that she needs him now, for she knows it will do nothing. His mind is set. She waits a beat, then asks him, “Are you sorry for this?” He looks at her curiously.

“My lady, no… not exactly… I wish only that I could claim what is mine. That things were different somehow… But,” he says, his tone resolved, “it is better this way. I can still see the child, and in time, when he or she is grown, we may tell the truth of it.”

She nods. She knows he is right, but part of her wishes she could make things how they ought to be, if there were no others but themselves to consider. When he helps her to her feet and kisses her on the forehead, he is as tender as she has ever known him.

They wait another week, just to be sure, before he announces the news to the household at dinner one night. A stunned hush greets his words, and it isn’t until Ned sits back down that a quiet rumble of conversation begins and grows. She studies the faces around the hall, at how they look to her and to him, but their comments are too mingled to determine. She wonders what they are saying; she fears the truth being discovered, and although Ned has tried to assure her that there is no-one who could know, the thought still plagues her.

After the meal is cleared away and sweet wine is set out in jugs, Catelyn notices that Barbrey Ryswell has been subdued beside Ned. Her eyes are distant and cold and she does not look to him even when he tries to speak to her. Catelyn wonders if they have had another disagreement – it is but two days since they argued last. She does not know exactly what they were fighting about – she only heard Ned’s raised voice – but thinks that mayhaps it was a difference in opinion over the timing of their marriage. Ned is in no hurry. She allows her gaze to flicker over to him, trying to catch his eye. He has his lord’s face on, though, and does not grant her even a glance.

So she sits and drinks a little and tries not to worry. Ned has called a meeting of the key household members for the morrow, where they will thrash out the finer details of the rule of Winterfell and what the birth of her babe might mean for the North. She thinks how easy it would have been for Ned to have refused to relinquish the position that had been passed on to him with Brandon’s death, and how men would have doubtless accepted him without a word. That is not Ned, though, and so instead they must wait, and wait, and do what honour decrees.  

How ironic, she thinks, that it was his quiet, decent sense of right that she first fell in love with on those lonely nights that seem half a lifetime ago, and it is that same thing that is now tearing them apart.

The next day, after dinner is finished and done, and the platters have been taken away, Catelyn looks up to see Barbrey Ryswell standing before her, looking somewhat nervous. “Lady Catelyn.”

Catelyn knows she should not show her bitterness, but it is hard when this woman will get to have her Ned, despite caring little for him. She does her best to keep her tone formal and polite as she says, “Lady Barbrey, can I help you?” Catelyn wonders why Barbrey has sought her out now when she so determinedly ignored her presence while Brandon was alive.

“It is past time that I offered you my condolences. I was myself grieved by Lord Brandon’s death, and I have neglected my courtesies.” Barbrey pauses, clears her throat. “I hear from my husband-to-be that you are to stay at Winterfell and that he intends to have you govern the North until your babe comes of age.”

“Yes,” says Catelyn.

“So I thought mayhaps it would be wise to make an effort to be friendly to one another. May I sit?” she asks with one hand on the back of the empty chair beside Catelyn. “I would wish to build some bridges with you, if you permit it?”

Her offer is surprising, but Catelyn nods her agreement. She must keep her courtesies. She waves her hand and Barbrey sits down. “I am sorry for my behaviour before. I never meant to hurt you.”

“Oh, it was not you who hurt me, Lady Barbrey. My lord husband’s behaviour was something no-one but he could control. But I suspect that much was obvious to you.”

Barbrey says nothing to that, but an embarrassed flush grows on her cheeks. “I convinced myself that he was in love with me,” she admits after a long moment. “Perhaps to justify the feelings I had for him. But I think deep down I knew that love was something very changeable in his eyes.”

“Brandon liked challenges. And there was always a part of him that enjoyed what had been forbidden him. Once we were married, his interest in me quickly waned. I was too familiar, and there was no winning left to be done.”

There is a pause.

“Do you think that was why he arranged my betrothal to Lord Eddard?” asks Barbrey hopefully. “So he might make me some sort of illicit thing?”

Catelyn sighs, the mention of Ned’s name stirring up her conflicted emotions. “It is possible, but who can really say? I do not know how much thought Brandon ever gave to the consequences of his decisions.”

“No.” Barbrey looks away, and Catelyn finds herself wondering just how deeply she cared for Brandon, and how much of her attraction to him was also based on the thrill of having something that was not hers to have. Catelyn thinks then of how she feels about Ned. Are her own feelings made stronger because she knows she cannot really have him? It is a sobering thought but one she feels sure is not true. She would love him even if they were both free to follow their hearts.

Barbrey offers a smile to her, drawing her back to their conversation. “Congratulations, also, on your news. It is a true shame that Lord Brandon cannot share in your joy. He would have been a good father.”

“Thank you,” replies Catelyn. “The Gods have timed it poorly, but it seems there is an arrangement now in place.”

“There is,” says Barbrey. “I have sent a raven to my father informing him of Lord Eddard’s decision.”

Catelyn tries not to smile at the mention of Rodrik Ryswell. She has met the man on only a handful of occasions, but she knows enough of him to have judged his character with reasonable accuracy. Ned’s decision to hand over the lordship of Winterfell to a babe in arms will put him back to where he was before Brandon died, as nothing more than the lord of some holdfast. It is not something that will concern Ned, for he has never been an ambitious man, but Rodrik Ryswell is another matter entirely.

“He will be disappointed that I am not to be the Lady of Winterfell,” continues Barbrey, “but he knows his allegiances too. House Ryswell has supported House Stark for hundreds of years, through good times and bad.” Barbrey gets to her feet and smiles. “Mayhaps you will have your child remember my father’s good will in the future.”

“I shall try to do so.”

When she is gone, Ned drifts to Catelyn’s side. He stands to one side of her, so he is just out of sight, but his presence makes her skin prickle. “What did she want?” he asks in a low voice. Catelyn keeps her gaze turned away from him, and focuses instead on the cup of wine she cradles between her hands.

“She came to apologise for her behaviour with Brandon, and to offer her congratulations. She has sent a raven to her father as well, to tell him of the developments.”

Ned gives a barely audible grunt. She hears him shift his position. “She tried to persuade me to disregard the line of inheritance just the other day.” Catelyn turns in her seat and looks up at him, realising that it may have been that they were arguing about when she overheard Ned’s raised voice coming from his solar. “She thinks the North will never stand behind a child.” He shakes his head. “But they will, if they think the claim is a rightful one.” He glances down at her, and their eyes meet, knowing the untruth behind his words and the lie that they are propagating for the sake of honour and the future of their child. For a moment, he looks pained. “When I was a boy, my father told me that it was not possible to be an honourable man and lie, and that the one excludes the other, but I am learning that it is not necessarily so. Sometimes even a lie can be an honourable thing.”

She nods in understanding and wordlessly holds out her hand. Despite the people in the room, he takes it and squeezes it. “I understand,” she tells him.

Sometimes you have to put the greater good before your own desires.       

The sickness begins a week later and Catelyn thinks she is fit to die. Every morning she wakes in the grip of nausea and it rumbles on throughout the day, rearing its insistent head whenever food is placed in front of her. She spends her time retching quietly in the privy, or lying curled on her bed, miserable and praying for relief. Old Nan tells her it is the babe and says there is no need to worry, but worry she does. It seems as if the child is poisoning her from within.

Ned keeps a reluctant distance, but enquires every day after her health. He orders Maester Luwin to visit her, but the little grey man can do little to help her – it is just a temporary thing, he assures her, and will be gone within a month or two.

But a month or two seems like an age. Catelyn tries to force food down, knowing she needs to keep up her strength, but too often even the smell of what is being served in the Great Hall is enough to make it worse. She spends her days in her chambers, trying to sleep through it, and speaks to no-one, until Ned comes to her.

His gentle knock gives him away, and through the haze of nausea, she calls him in. She barely notices that he has entered until he is kneeling beside the bed smoothing the dampened hair from her forehead. She smiles blearily at him and tries to rise, but he shakes his head and tells her, “Stay, Cat, I do not need for you to sit up. I came simply to see you and see how you are faring.”

“I am coping. Maester Luwin sees me every day and he thinks it will not be long before I will be feeling better.”

“I am sorry,” he murmurs.

“It is not your fault,” Catelyn replies. She feels his fingers stroking through her hair still.

“I think it could be seen that way.” He smiles and bends to kiss her forehead. Chuckling despite herself, she takes up his hand and squeezes it and loves him for his touching concern. He shifts his position and whispers, “I’ve brought you something that might help. Everyone has been worried for you and Barbrey came to me last night with this…” He holds out a glass vial bearing an amber liquid. “It is a tonic that was first brewed for her sister Bethany when she was with child and suffering in the same way you are now. It is to be mixed with warm water and drunk. It is quite the wonder cure, so I am told.”

Catelyn pulls herself up to sitting and takes the vial from him and uncorks it. Whatever is within smells intensely of lemons and ginger, but there is something else beneath those scents, something aromatic and medicinal. It reminds her of the scent of rosemary. “That is very kind of her.”

“I thought so too.” He smiles. “I am starting to think that mayhaps judging her on her behaviour with my brother was unfair.”

“Mayhaps,” agrees Catelyn.

He angles his head towards the nightstand, where she sees a cup of steaming liquid. “I brought hot water too.”

“Thank you.” She pulls it slightly toward her. “How much of this do I put in?” she asks him.

“Barbrey said that half of the bottle should be sufficient.” 

It seems rather a lot, but she does not question it, and pours the requisite amount into the cup, gives it a swill, then drinks it down. The taste is quite pleasant. As she sets the empty cup back down on the nightstand, she feels the warmth heat her from within. She hopes the cure will do its work; she is tired beyond all patience of passing her days abed.

Ned’s eyes are watching her, and she smiles at him, trying to ease him. She knows his guilt will be less when she is feeling better and able to get up again. In the meantime, though, it is just pleasant to be in his company again; he has kept himself so remote from her these last few weeks that they have barely spent any time together, and none of it alone. She releases a long sigh and her head droops slightly. She is tired. “Is the latch down?” she asks him after a moment. He nods. “Will you hold me for a while then?”

There is a brief flash of indecision in his eyes, then he lifts up her legs and lays her on her side. Climbing onto the bed behind her, he shadows his body alongside hers, his chin resting on her shoulder. One arm curls over her and his hand rubs softly, soothingly, against her belly. He says nothing. The warmth of him and the gentle motion of his hand are quieting and she feels the fatigue beginning to overwhelm her. It isn’t long before her eyes fall closed.

When she wakes again, it is well past dawn, and light is pouring in through the gap between the heavy tapestries that cover the window. She is alone, but there is a fur thrown over her – the tell-tale sign that he has been with her. With surprise, she realises that the fog of nausea that has hung over her for the last fortnight is all but gone. She glances at the bottle of medicine on her nightstand and silently thanks Barbrey Ryswell for thinking of it, and of her.

She goes to the window and pulls open the tapestries, revealing a beautiful day. There is a thick frost covering everything, but the sky is so blue it makes her blink. Down in the courtyard, she sees Ned standing with Barbrey Ryswell and Hullen. They are examining a pair of elegant coursers, one black, the other a rich bay. Hullen is picking up the horses’ feet and running his hands along their backs, while Ned and Barbrey talk. She can see Ned’s destrier saddled and standing just behind the coursers, a recurve hunting bow strapped across its back, suggesting that he must be planning to go out seeking deer.  

Heedless of the cold, she flings open the window. It has been days since she has been out of her chambers and the sharp, fresh chill of the air makes her long for the wind in her hair and her mare beneath her, so she washes the sleep from her face, braids her hair back and dons her riding breeches, tunic and her wolf skin cloak. There is a kind of energy inside her, and she decides that she will go and surprise them all with her improved health.

As she walks into the courtyard, she hears Ned’s voice: “Your father is truly generous, my lady. These are fine animals.” Barbrey strokes one of the horses on the neck. She smiles and replies,

“I’m pleased you think so, my lord. My father saw that there were several older animals in the stables and thought you would be appreciative.”

“Indeed,” says Ned, reaching for the bridle of the black horse. He catches sight of Catelyn coming towards them across the courtyard and pauses, smiling broadly.

“Good morrow,” she greets them.

And then his eyes slip from hers downwards and his smile stutters and fails. “My lady--”

“Gods be good!” says Barbrey as her eyes follow the same path as Ned’s.

Frowning, Catelyn looks down and sees what they have seen. A dark bloom is spreading rapidly across the pale grey of her breeches and staining rivulets of red down her thighs. She stops in her tracks and stares. Her fingers touch the mark and come away slick with blood… but this is no moon blood, she knows. She looks up at Ned.

The last thing she sees before everything goes black is him lurching forward to catch her as she crumples.


	4. Chapter 4

“Cat!”

He grabs her just in time, snagging her a moment before she hits the ground. Her body is a dead weight in his arms and he sees her eyes roll in her head as she faints away. He sets her down on the stones and touches her cheek, calling her name over, but there is no response. She is out cold. He looks up at Barbrey. “Call for the maester,” he tells her, then glances around the courtyard. “We need to get her inside.”

Adjusting his position as best he can, he scoops her into his arms and carries her up the steps to her chamber to lay her on her bed. The blood is still spreading between her thighs, and he feels a horrible sense of futility as he beholds it, knowing even then what it means.

He drops to his knees beside the bed, smoothes back her hair from her face, and then lays a hand on her forehead, as he once watched his mother doing to his brothers and sister. There is no excessive heat there, just the clamminess of fear. His heart is hammering. “Cat, can you hear me?” he whispers.

The door is still standing open and Barbrey and Maester Luwin appear. The maester hurries to the bedside. “My lord,” he says, nodding to Ned. “Tell me what happened.”

“I am unsure exactly,” admits Ned. “She came down to the courtyard, saying she was feeling much better, and it was almost pouring out of her. Is it--?”

The maester says nothing, but looks at the bloody mess between Catelyn’s legs and shakes his head. “She is losing the babe,” he confirms. “This is how it is sometimes. The bleeding will slow in time.”

“Why did she faint?”

“I suspect the shock caused the fainting episode, my lord, not the loss of the child. I am sure she will awake in a short while.” Two of Catelyn’s handmaidens arrive and come to stand beside him. Luwin turns to Ned. “My lord, you should take your leave, we will need to examine the Lady Catelyn.”

“I’m not leaving,” says Ned. He does not care if it seems odd that he should stay. He just needs to make sure that she is all right. “If she wakes up, she will want to see me.”

Luwin looks at him curiously, but then nods his head and replies, “As you wish, my lord. But I would ask you to stand back. It would not be seemly for you to be watching too closely.”

“My lord,” says Barbrey. “If you or Lady Catelyn have need of anything--” She looks anxiously at Catelyn’s motionless form on the bed.

“I will find you,” Ned tells her. “Thank you, my lady. Your concern is… appreciated.”

Once she has left, Ned goes to one of the chairs beside the fire and sits. He watches while the maester removes Catelyn’s soiled breeches, sends the two handmaids to fetch warm water, soap and clean linen and then cleans her up as best he can. When he has finished, dressed her in a fresh nightgown and sent away the maids, Luwin brings out smelling salts from his bag and begins to prepare them. Their pungent scent wafts through the air towards Ned, making him recoil a touch. Noticing his reaction, Luwin explains, “I will try to wake the Lady Catelyn with these. We must then administer a dose of moon tea to ensure the womb is empty of all matter that could cause an infection. I won’t lie to you, my lord; a miscarriage is a gravely dangerous thing, particularly if infection ensues.”

Ned feels his heart clutch in his chest. “What has caused this? She said she was feeling much better.”

“There may be any number of things,” Luwin replies as he works. “It may have been something Lady Catelyn ate or drank that disagreed with her, a consequence of her sickness, or it could simply have been nature’s way of dealing with a problem with the babe – some malformation, for example.” Ned frowns. The maester stirs the smelling salts and then drops a little oil onto them from a vial, whereupon they begin to smoke gently. Luwin’s voice is quiet and confidential when he says, “There are also some who say that a miscarriage is the result of infidelity.”

At his words, Ned freezes. Luwin does not turn around, simply continuing on with his work. Ned wonders whether he knows something or whether the comment is nothing more than an observation. Should he acknowledge the remark or ignore it? The room is empty but for the two of them and Catelyn, still asleep on the bed, and the door is pushed nearly closed. The indecision keeps him silent for longer than it possibly should.

Slowly, Ned gets to his feet and goes to the door. He closes it fully, then drops the latch into place. He turns to Maester Luwin and says, “The babe was mine.”

Luwin’s hands stop their action and he straightens, then meets Ned’s gaze. He purses his lips in thought. “I had my suspicions, my lord.”

Ned frowns. “How?”

“On the day Lord Brandon was killed, I chanced to be in the Godswood, collecting herbs and mushrooms for my stores.” He pauses and looks at Ned. “I saw you and the Lady Catelyn through the trees.” He gives no further elaboration, for it is not needed – Ned knows exactly what he must have seen. Looking to the ground, he curses himself quietly. He had known that there was a chance they could have been discovered. The Godswood was a place of quiet, but it was still within the castle walls and still often visited. “I had seen you talking together at feasts before, and my lady seemed to have taken quite a shine to you. One did not need to be a maester to see her face change when you came into sight.” Ned says nothing. “I know Lord Brandon did not treat her kindly.”

“No…”

“Lord Brandon came to me just a few months ago to ask if there was anything I could give him that would hasten the bringing of a babe. He was concerned that two years of his marriage had passed without an heir being born.” The memory of his angry confrontation with Brandon in the courtyard floods through Ned’s mind, prickling him once again with guilt. “We spoke about him needing to keep to his marriage bed,” Luwin continues softly. “And I gave him something to take himself and to give to Lady Catelyn to promote fertility.”

Ned sighs and goes to the edge of the bed, looking down at Catelyn. “If you knew about us, why did you not say something?”

“I did not think it wise, my lord.” Luwin looks down at his feet, his hands clasping together inside the sleeves of his robe so it looks for a moment as if they have vanished. Ned studies him carefully.

“But keeping silent went against your vow to serve this house…”

“Yes,” agrees the maester, “but there were more than vows to consider. There was a babe, and my words could determine whether that babe was raised a bastard or the next Lord of Winterfell.” He pauses and looks up at Ned. “And I have learned in my time that sometimes honour requires for the truth to be hidden.”

Suddenly, there is a moan from the bed and Catelyn stirs. Ned starts and drops to his knees. “Cat,” he says reflexively, the maester’s presence forgotten. “Cat, can you hear me?”

“Mmm…” She opens her eyes and they roll towards him.

“How are you feeling?”

“I am…” She pauses as her memory recalls. “Ned… what happened?” she asks. “I fainted, didn’t I?” Unable to form the words, Ned takes up her hand and holds it to his chest. Maester Luwin is standing over them then and Catelyn’s eyes fly up to him, frantic for information. “Please…” she begs. “Tell me.”

“You have suffered a miscarriage, my lady. Your babe has been lost.” Catelyn’s face creases and her eyes fill with tears. “I am sorry.” She turns to Ned for confirmation and he nods.

“I’m sorry, my love.”

Her jaw shakes and she rolls onto her side, curling her legs up to her chest and shuddering as she tries to hold back the tears. It is a horrible feeling of uselessness to watch her. He wants to soothe her, but instinctively knows that no words he can offer will help. She has to come to terms with this herself before anything he can do will be worth a thing.

Slowly, painfully slowly, her shaking stops and the quiet takes over. “My lady?” Ned dares to question eventually. Catelyn opens her eyes and looks up at him; she wipes the wetness from her face and swallows.

“Why?” Her voice is plaintive.

Ned looks at the maester, silently begging him not to repeat all of what he told him – the last thing Catelyn needs is to think that this was some kind of vengeance from the gods for lying with him. Luwin nods in understanding. “My lady, there are many reasons why this may have happened. It is impossible to really say what caused it with any certainty. It could have been that there was something wrong with the foetus. Or perhaps something you ate or drank…”

“My maids brought me a tray of food up last night. It was just bread and butter – I haven’t been able to face anything else for days.” The maester gives a small shrug.

“That seems an unlikely cause then,” he says. “But as I have said, it could have been a number of things.”

Suddenly, Catelyn freezes and a frown grows between her eyes. She looks over to the nightstand. “Where is that medicine you brought me last night, Ned? Have you taken away the bottle?”

“No, I thought you might have further need of it.”  

She pushes back the furs and climbs to her feet. At the touch of cool air on her, she shivers. Ned backs away a touch, allowing her room to move. Her eyes scan around the room. “It is gone. I left it here on the nightstand… Someone must have taken it,” she says.

“What is it you speak of, my lady?” Maester Luwin asks.

Catelyn looks to Ned, her eyes dark and challenging. He thinks he knows what she is suggesting. A sense of unease is growing inside him; he had trusted Barbrey and taken her at her word, but could it be? He turns to the maester. “Lady Barbrey gave me a vial of medicine she said had been made to a recipe concocted for her sister when she was suffering with sickness while she was with child. I was anxious to be of some use, so I gave it to Lady Catelyn last night.”

“What was it?”

“She did not say exactly,” says Ned.

“It smelt of ginger and lemons,” Catelyn supplies. “But there was something herbal underneath it – a little like rosemary. It tasted pleasant enough.” She goes to the nightstand and taps the surface. “I swear to you both… I left it here on the nightstand. The bottle was still half full. The cup is here, but the vial is gone.”

“The only people who have been in this room have been the three of us, your maids Lana and Edie, and…” Ned stops as the realisation dawns on him. “And Barbrey,” he finishes.

“She’s taken the bottle, Ned,” Catelyn says suddenly. Her face is angry. “There was something in that bottle, I’ll swear it. Something that would cause this. She said she had sent a raven to her father, and Rodrik Ryswell has made no secret of his ambitions. Brandon’s death must have been a welcome thing to him – his daughter would not just marry a Stark, but be the Lady of Winterfell.”

Ned’s frown deepens and he stares dazed at the nightstand – the absence of the vial he left her the night before is undeniable. “It is a fact that the Ryswells stood to lose a great deal to the babe…” His voice is thoughtful. “And Barbrey and I argued about my decision just a few days ago. But I never believed--” 

The Maester jumps in, “I understand what you both fear. Let us just think this through, my lord, before we do something rash. The cup Lady Catelyn used is still here.” Picking it up, he peers inside. “And there is a very small swallow of liquid left in it. I can take this to my tower and try to find out what is contained within it, if you are prepared to wait a short while.”

“Do it,” says Ned.

“Very well, my lord,” says Luwin. He nods and goes to the door, lifting the latch and then disappearing in a billow of grey cloak.

And then they are alone. The silence between them is palpable, thick with tension. Catelyn stares at him from across the room, and it is clear that she is as incensed as she is distressed. Ned knows she wants him to act, but he also knows that the maester is right and they must tread carefully. “We must act with caution,” he tells her in a quiet voice, hoping that she hears and understands his reasons. “I know it is tempting to want to ascribe blame already, but if this is the way of things, we must needs have proof. All we have now is an accusation.”

“We have your word, and mine.”

“Yes,” he allows, “but that will hold for little. Without proof, words are wind. As Lord of Winterfell I have the right to exact the King’s justice, but I must be certain that the accusation is true. It would not do for it to seem as if hearsay or opinion was involved. We must deal in facts.” He goes to her and embraces her; her arms grasp around him tightly, and she presses her face into his chest.

“And if we can prove this…?” she asks, her voice muffled slightly against the boiled leather of his doublet. Ned sighs.

“If we can prove this, then it would mean I must have Lord Ryswell answer for his crimes.”

That evening, after dinner, Ned walks the walls with heavy steps. It is a clear night and colder than the grave. His breath mists in the air before him and he can feel the sharp sting of an icy wind on his cheek; above him the stars are bright and twinkling in the sky, bringing the promise of a harsh frost by the morn. He stops near the northern watchtower and looks down into the courtyard. There is nobody about. A faint sound of laughter comes from the Great Hall, and he wonders who is still there and eating – he left some time ago. Catelyn had spent the evening in her rooms, but Barbrey Ryswell had been at table, and she had asked after Cat with an air of genuine concern that had made Ned’s skin crawl with distrust. She had laughed and japed with the men of the household and had sat beside Ned with not a worry etched on her elegant face. He had done his best to keep a cool exterior to hide the truth of the situation he was in, praying that his face did not betray his suspicions.

He sighs and plunges his hands into his pockets. His mind turns to Brandon and he wonders what he would have done. Would he have waited and bided his time in this way? Ned has always been a cautious man, whereas Brandon was always the one to act first and think later, and he would probably have clapped Barbrey in irons already. But thinking like this only serves to make Ned wonder if he has made the right choice, and that achieves nothing.

Footsteps behind him draw his attention and he turns to see Maester Luwin approaching him. The maester is a small man, half-drowned in his voluminous grey robe, and his eyes are sharp and quick. “My lord,” he greets, “I saw you walking the walls from my tower. I hope you do not mind me coming to you here?”

“Not at all. Do you bring me news?”

“I do,” says Luwin.

“And?”

“My tests have revealed that the cup in Lady Catelyn’s room like as not contained moon tea.” He pauses and Ned sighs in the gap, turning away and looking down onto the courtyard once again. “But there is more, my lord,” continues Luwin. “The preparation was mine own.”

At that, Ned startles and spins back to the maester. “Your own?”

“Yes, my lord, and I was as surprised as you. I have not recently given Lady Barbrey or anyone else within Winterfell’s walls such a thing. But then, I realised that some months ago, after the celebration for Lord Brandon’s last name day, Lady Barbrey came to me requesting moon tea for her own consumption. She had lain with Lord Brandon and did not wish to risk getting a child.”

The news does not surprise Ned. “And you gave it to her?” he asks Luwin.

“I did, my lord. At the time, Lord Brandon was my liege and therefore I did as I was bid and did not ask questions, nor have I, until now, deemed it necessary or appropriate to reveal the information. However, I would surmise that mayhaps Lady Barbrey decided not to use the tea, for whatever reason, and therefore it was still in her possession when it was revealed that Lady Catelyn was with child.”

_For whatever reason_ , thinks Ned, then pushes the thought to the back of his mind. It is enough that his brother has lain with the woman he intended Ned to marry without considering why exactly she might have not used her prescription of moon tea. “Do you believe she has acted alone?”

“She sent a raven to her father just a few days ago,” Luwin replies. “I have the records of it.” Ned narrows his eyes at that, and it seems that there is his answer.

“Catelyn said as much.” He pauses, knowing what this truly means, then turns to his companion, face grave. “Would you be willing to swear on this information you have told me should I decide to move on it?”

“Of course, my lord,” Luwin answers without hesitation. “I serve you as I serve Winterfell.”

Turning away from the maester, Ned looks back out across the grey stone walls. Everything is deathly silent, like the moment before the drawing in of a last breath. He doesn’t know what he is looking for, only that looking gives him time to think. Rodrick Ryswell has always been a staunch supporter of the Starks and he fought bravely for the North at the Trident. If Ned is to accuse him of murdering a babe and the rightful heir to Winterfell, the repercussions will be felt from Moat Cailin to the Wall and back again. His charge against the Lord of the Rills must be entirely without doubt.

Luwin seems to have read his mind, for he asks quietly, “And what of the vial, my lord? Your case would be more persuasive if you had the vial of medicine given to you by Lady Barbrey.”

“Yes…” agrees Ned, although he suspects the vial is long gone, thrown into the moat or buried in the Godswood. After all, it is the way of criminals to try to dispose of the evidence. “I shall gather a few loyal men tomorrow and try to search for it, but I do not hope to find it. I am sure it will have been disposed of.”

“But no harm will come of a search for it, my lord, and it would be prudent to do so if you plan on charging Rodrik Ryswell with this crime.”

“Indeed.” Ned sighs, his breath fogging thick and white in the night air, and turns away from Luwin. “Thank you for your help, Maester,” he says distantly. The maester says nothing, but Ned hears him leave, as quietly as he came, and then the silence rules again. He leans against the rampart. Beneath him, in the courtyard, a couple of men-at-arms stumble out of the Great Hall, and their laughter rings out loud, disturbing the quiet. For a long moment, he watches, thinking on the task that awaits him on the morrow, then straightens and rolls his shoulders. If it were not so dark, he would go out to the Godswood to sit and do his thinking beneath the heart tree, but the moon is naught but a sliver and the night is chill, and if he went, he would surely freeze. Instead, he wonders if Catelyn is yet awake. It is late, he knows, but still he finds himself heading in the direction of her rooms.

Once there, he knocks gently on her door and waits. No reply comes. He is just about to give up and turn away, thinking that she is likely abed, when the latch clicks and the door opens and she is there before him. Her eyes are sleep-heavy and she carries a sputtering candle against the darkness. “Ned,” she says. She looks nervously up and down the hallway, then meets his gaze. “What are you doing here?”

“Let me in, please?” he begs.

She regards him a moment, then stands aside and lets him enter, closing the door behind him. “What is it? Is there something wrong…?” Ned looks at her and thinks about how strong she truly is, underneath that fine feminine style of auburn hair and high cheekbones and soft curves, and how she puts him to shame.

“I am tired,” he admits in a voice barely above a whisper. “And troubled, and… and I needed to see you. I’m sorry…” He turns and puts a hand on the latch. “I will go.”

She sets down her candle and then puts her hand atop his and shakes her head. “No, you won’t. Come here.” Her arms wrap around him and he sighs and sinks into her embrace. This should be the other way around, he thinks, as she rubs his back in rhythm – I should be the one comforting her, after all she has endured these past few days. He draws in a deep breath and pulls back. She says nothing, but her eyes meet his and command silently that he speaks, so he tells her of Maester Luwin’s findings and what is planned for the morrow, and when he has finished, she nods and he thinks she understands why he is troubled. “If I charge Rodrik Ryswell with this, I must be prepared to carry out the sentence,” he says in a heavy voice.

She looks at him and he knows she knows what he means. He thinks of Ice, kept under lock and key in the armoury, his now, and adds, “The man who passes the sentence must swing the sword.”

“I know… and that is why it is not an easy thing. But this is good. It means the death is not something done on a whim.” She goes to him and takes his hands in her own, offering him what relief she can. A wry smile crosses her lips. “I have learned something of the ways of the Starks, you see,” she tells him.

He tries to return her smile, but the gesture falters under the weight of his worries. “I know you have, my lady.”

“What will become of Barbrey?”

Truly, Ned has given little thought to his betrothed, but one thing is clear – if he names Rodrik Ryswell guilty, then the marriage pact between them will stand in ruins. He thinks of all the times he has wished to be free of his intended marriage, never once thinking that it would end like this, with the agreement cast asunder because of murder and treason. But even so, he can feel no joy. Too much has been lost, and too much spoiled – it is as if they have lived a lifetime of disappointments and distress in just a few short months.  

He looks to the door. “I should go…”

A moment passes. “Stay,” she says. At that simple word, the war that fights within him whenever he looks upon her suddenly seems a thousand leagues away, and all he hears is her quiet plea. “No-one will know.”

“No…”

Pushing all thoughts from his brain, he lets her guide him to the bed and sits still and silent while she takes off his garb and then pushes him gently back into the pillows, covering him with blankets and furs. Dimly, he recalls the times he has done the same for her, and wonders if that is why she is now returning the gesture. He sighs. Without a word, she slips in beside him and curls against him, her head pillowed on his chest. For a change, no spark of desire lights at her touch, but he knows that that is not her intention, and instead he throws his arm around her and draws her close. What harm is there, he thinks, in sharing a bed with her, now that they stand where they are?

The next morning dawns frosty and bright, yet another clear, cold and blue day with nary a cloud in the sky. Ravens quorking outside the window wake him and as he stirs, and opens his eyes, he remembers where he is. Catelyn lies up against him, though her head has slipped from his chest to the featherbed beneath them, and she has turned on her side to face him.

Everything is quiet, and in the quiet, he watches her. Her face is softened by sleep, girlish, almost, and there is little trace on it of the strength and silent bravery with which she faces everything challenging in her life. Yet still now, her arms are crossed around her in an embrace, as if even in sleep she feels the need to protect herself. He wonders if that is a habit from childhood, or something learned within the walls of Winterfell.

Slowly, he eases himself from the bed, so as not to wake her, and begins to dress. Once fully garbed, he casts a last look over her sleeping form and then departs. In the courtyard, Ser Rodrik Cassell is already about his work, discussing something with Vayon Poole, and Ned calls them both to him. “Ser Rodrik, gather a dozen trustworthy men and meet me in the Great Hall. Vayon, please find Maester Luwin – his presence is required also.”

It is not long before Ned is seated in the hall with the doors closed and some of the gathered men posted on watch outside. Ser Rodrik’s broad shoulders do not flinch as Ned tells the tale, turning to Maester Luwin to confirm the necessary parts, but by the end, his craggy face is dark. “My lord, this vial you speak of… what does it look like?”

At that, Maester Luwin steps forward. “If I might be so bold,” he says to Ned, who nods at him to continue. “I have a similar receptacle with me, to act as a guide.” He reaches into the left-hand pocket of his flowing robe and produces a glass vial identical to the one Barbrey gave Ned. He passes it to Ser Rodrik, who then scrutinises it.

“It’s not very big,” observes Vayon Poole. “However will we find it?”

“We may not,” Ned says, “but we are going to try. My situation will be greatly improved if we do.” He pauses and casts his eye around the group of men. “Those of you who know me know that I do not like to trade in coin for leal service. Instead, I would wish you to know that this is a matter that means a great deal to me. I must ask you to go about your task calmly, but rest assured, I will be sure to reward any man who uncovers anything of significance.”  

The men all nod or murmur their ‘yes, m’lords’ and then Ned dismisses them. The room empties as quickly as it filled and he is left with Maester Luwin once again. “My lord,” says Luwin, “Doubtless our activity will not go unnoticed. What would you have me tell anyone who questions what we are doing?”

Ned purses his lips in thought a moment, then replies, “Tell them we are conducting a search. Do not lie… simply keep the truth close to your chest.”

Luwin nods and takes his leave.

As the morning wears on with little fruit from the searches, Ned goes to the solar and stands by the window, looking down at the men as they work. They proceed methodically through the castle, going through each room with patient eyes and thorough hands - even the midden heap is searched.

He is just about to give up his vigil when there comes a knock at the door. The sound is urgent. “Come,” shouts Ned, and the door opens to reveal Vayon Poole. His dark hair is damp with sweat and he is red-faced and out of breath. Ned frowns. “What is it?”

“My lord,” says Poole. “We have found your vial.” 


	5. Chapter 5

From the moment Ned sets eyes upon the steward, he thinks that there is something worrying about Poole’s manner, and the faces of the two men-at-arms who have come to stand beside him are little better. Ned narrows his eyes. “Where is it then?” he asks. “Have you brought the vial to me?”

“I thought best not to, my lord,” Poole says. His voice is quiet and hesitant.

“Why?”

“Because--” Poole’s explanation is cut off by the arrival of Maester Luwin, who billows into the room with sweeping steps. He, too, looks grave, and Ned comes around the great carved table that dominates the solar to face them all.

“Because what, Vayon? Speak to me,” Ned prompts. Swallowing, Poole looks to the floor. Frustration courses through Ned as the steward turns his gaze away. _Why will he not look me in the eye?_ “Look at me!”

Reluctantly, Poole raises his head and meets Ned’s eyes. “My lord, the vial was found in your chambers.”

Ned’s stomach drops away with a lurch and his eyes flick from man to man in disbelief, thinking that mayhaps there is some mistake, or he has misheard. “In _my_ chambers?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Where?”

“It was plain as day upon the nightstand, my lord.”

There is a strained silence. Ser Rodrik’s hand twitches and lands on the hilt of his longsword. “I hope you don’t think I placed it there?” Ned says, as he beholds the faces of the men gathered around him. “Why would I have called a search if I knew where the thing was?”

Luwin takes a step towards him. “My lord, you realise what this is meant to suggest, don’t you?”

For a moment, Ned is confused. And then the full realisation dawns upon him, and it hits with the force of an arrow to the belly. He glances at the maester. “You think _I_ took it?” he says, unable to keep the rising tone of astonishment from his voice. “That this is part of some kind of elaborate deception? That _I_ gave Lady Catelyn that medicine?” Nobody answers. Indignant anger flares up as he looks around at the embarrassed and unwilling faces of Vayon Poole, Rodrik Cassell and the other men. How can they think such a thing? And then he remembers that, in their eyes, the discovery that Catelyn was with child meant that he had needed to surrender his claim to Winterfell. They know nothing of the babe’s real parentage, nothing of the deal Cat and he had forged between them for the sake of their child. All they can see is a man with a perfect motive.

Luwin clears his throat. Ned looks to him; he is the only one of the group who knows the truth of the matter. “Vayon, I know how this appears, but I do not believe this is Lord Eddard’s doing,” he says quietly. A tense moment hangs, unwieldy in the pause. “My lord, if you wish to clear your name in this, you must needs speak the truth to these men.”

The truth.

Ned thinks of Jon Snow then, back at his holdfast, being tended to by the hired nurse and wonders if his truth will come out as easily as this has. “Maester Luwin,” he begins, “will you please close the door? Vayon, Ser Rodrik… gentlemen, please be seated.”

Ser Rodrik shares a glance with Poole, but they all sit. Ned sits too, steeples his hands together and sighs, wondering where exactly to begin. Luwin stands at the door, a grey shadow presiding over the scene. “What I am about to tell you will doubtless surprise you, but I hope that it will show me innocent and will convince you as to the real reason why I have pursued this matter.

“Many moons ago, I fell in love with my brother’s wife. It began innocently enough – as mere comfort and friendship. But, Lady Catelyn returned my affections, and though neither of us wished to deceive or dishonour anyone, one evening we found ourselves crossing the line that we had both drawn between us.” Ned stops, finding himself thinking of how much heartache they could have saved themselves had they not succumbed to the pull of mutual attraction that night in the stables. “Shortly afterward my brother announced my betrothal to Lady Barbrey, he was killed and I became Lord of Winterfell. This you all know. In the aftermath, I resolved to send Lady Catelyn back to Riverrun, knowing that if I kept her at Winterfell, I would be at risk of breaking my vows with her again… And then Lady Catelyn discovered she was with child.”

With a sigh, Ned confesses, “The babe was surely mine. But between us, for the sake of the child, we agreed to announce that Lord Brandon was the babe’s father--”

“But that action meant you gave up your claim to Winterfell and the rule of the North…” says Poole, confusion peppering his tone. _He is used to Brandon_ , Ned thinks, _so the notion of self-sacrifice seems strange to him._ “Why would you be willing to do that?”

Ned smiles despite himself. “Vayon, I am not an ambitious man. You forget that I am a second son.” He waves a hand in the air, encompassing Winterfell in a gesture. “None of this was ever meant for me. And I know better than most what it means to bear a bastard’s name – the boy I brought home from the wars has shown me that much. I did not wish that for another child, or for Lady Catelyn, especially when there was a way of meaning it did not have to be so.”  He sighs. “So, yes, this is indeed part of an elaborate deception, just not the one you suppose it to be.”

Maester Luwin, who has remained silent while Ned has spoken, steps forward. “In the light of what you have heard, do you now believe that Lord Eddard plotted the murder of his own babe, as the finding of this vial in his rooms suggests?”

Ser Rodrik turns to Ned. The look of veiled suspicion that had haunted his face is gone now and instead he nods. “My lord, I am sorry to have considered you to have committed this dishonourable act. I confess it seemed against what I know of your character, but when the evidence is apparently placed before you, it is hard to ignore it. Please accept my apologies.”

“And mine also, Lord Eddard,” says Poole. “I hope I have not offended you too deeply.”

Shaking his head, Ned replies, “No, your reactions were understandable, given the situation in which you found yourselves.” He pauses. “But now we stand little further on in our investigation than before, although pointing in a slightly different direction. I must needs discover how this vial came to be in my rooms.” He glances quickly and pointedly at the men in the room. “I confess that I have not slept in my chambers these last two nights.”

“Someone must have planted the vial, my lord,” says Poole.

“The only people other than Lord Eddard who have had opportunity to take the vial from Lady Catelyn’s possession are myself, Lady Catelyn’s handmaids Lana and Edie, and Lady Barbrey,” Luwin says. “The preparation of moon tea is mine own, I admit, but I have no reason for wishing to see Lady Catelyn’s babe murdered in the womb. I believe we can also eliminate the maids as they have no motive either.”

“Which leaves us with Barbrey Ryswell… my betrothed,” concludes Ned sourly.

“Now, Lady Barbrey _does_ have a motive,” says the maester, “as you and Lady Catelyn explained to me the other day. And she left before either of us did, my lord. Where did she go to?”

“Mayhaps someone saw her,” suggests Poole. “It was morning when Lady Catelyn fell ill was it not? There will have been many of the servants about their chores. We should speak to them.”

Ned nods his approval. “Very well. Gather up everyone who was working yesterday and bring them to the Great Hall.” The steward bows and retreats, taking the guardsmen with him, but instead of leaving too, the maester hangs back a moment.

“My lord, I am unsure how to say this without sounding patronising, which is not my intention, I swear, but I thought you were brave to speak the truth to them. Many lords would simply have ordered them to hold their tongues and threatened them with death.”

His boots suddenly become very interesting, and Ned finds himself colouring a touch at the maester’s words. He will be one and twenty on his next name day, yet for some reason right now he feels little more than a boy. But he knows Luwin means well. He clears his throat, looks up and smiles at him. “Thank you for your confidence,” he says softly. “It is appreciated. I do not enjoy lying, although I know it was a necessary evil in this situation.”

Together, they descend the Great Hall and find the room crammed full with bodies – serving girls, chamber maids, stable lads and pot boys, kitchen girls and men-at-arms, even Old Nan. There are girls of no more than fourteen standing alongside seasoned workers, with fifty years of hard labour etched on their faces. They are talking amongst themselves, their voices accented with curiosity and concern at their sudden summoning, but when their lord enters the room, they fall quickly silent. Ned goes to the dais, then looks down at them. “Who amongst you worked inside the Great Keep yesterday?” he asks. A forest of hands rises. “If you did not, you may go.”

Slowly, about half of the gathered crowd disperses, their voices growing braver as they leave the hall, sharing theories as to what their lord has to say and whether their leaving is a good thing or not. Those remaining drift closer together, as if there is protection in a tighter-knit group. Ned tries not to be offended by their behaviour – he understands that he has not yet won their trust. “And of you who remain, who saw anybody behaving unusually in the vicinity of the Great Keep? Mayhaps going into rooms that were not their own, or waiting in a hallway, or trying to conceal their presence…”

At first, his question is greeted with silence, then a few murmurs begin, and eventually, a single hand rises from out of the crowd. The bodies part, the voices crescendo, and Ned finds himself looking on a face he has not laid eyes upon since that fateful night two moons ago now when he and Brandon argued, and lines that should not have been crossed were crossed.

Ser Rodrik bangs the stump of his spear against the wooden floor to quiet the talking and Ned beholds the girl. She stands alone now; her long, dark mane of hair is tied up in a looped braid and her face is pale with shock. She looks a good deal younger and more naïve than when she was thrusting her breasts in Brandon’s face and laughing as he danced with her.

“What is your name?” Ned asks.

For a moment, the girl looks as if she is about to turn tail and flee. Her eyes are wide and her hands are clasped tightly together to try to conceal the fact that they are shaking. “My name’s Larra, m’lord,” she says in a voice so quiet Ned has to take a step forward, the better to hear her clearly.

The girl’s eyes flicker around the crowd of people and, abruptly, Ned realises that they are all listening and intent. He frowns. It is enough to expect one so young to speak to him like this, let alone with half of Winterfell listening in. “Larra, please stay… The rest of you may go. You are no longer needed.” With some reluctance, the crowd disperses, and then it is just Ned, the girl, the maester, Poole and Ser Rodrik. In the gust of cold air that funnels through the open door, Larra shivers. Ned goes to the door and closes it; the sound echoes throughout the empty room. “Is that better?” he asks the girl. She nods.

“Yes, m’lord, thank you, m’lord.”  

“Now, Larra, please say what you saw in the Great Keep.”

She looks down at the ground, then begins, “I wasn’t even supposed to be the Great Keep, m’lord, but I was sent there to give a message to Jenny – she’s one of the chambermaids, m’lord.” Ned nods.

“Go on,” he prompts.

“Well, I found her and delivered the message and then I was making my way back down when I saw Lord Eddard’s lady knocking on his chamber door. There was no answer, but she went inside anyway…” She glances at Ned with tentative eyes. “I, I thought mayhaps Lord Eddard was expecting her.”

Ned looks to Luwin. “And did you see anybody else while you were there?” asks the maester.

“No, m’lord.”

“Thank you, Larra,” says Ned, offering the girl a small smile. “You have been most helpful. I may need to count on you to repeat your account later, in front of others. Would you be prepared to do that?”

“Yes, of course, m’lord.”

“Good. You may go back to your duties now.”

With a nervous glance at the other men in the room, Larra bows her head and scuttles from the room. Ned knows that she will go straight to her friends and spill the story of what she has just told him, and that there is little he can do to stop her. Like as not, it will be but a short while before the word will be out around the castle and Lady Barbrey will learn of what they are doing. He turns to Ser Rodrik and Poole. “Thank you, my friends. I will call on you again once I have decided how best to proceed. Maester Luwin,” he continues, “I would wish to speak with you in private. I have need of your counsel now.”

The Maester’s Tower at Winterfell is a tall, thin, crenelated construction, reached by a winding stone stair that seems to go on forever. Several rooms sprout off the staircase – a reading room, with all four of its walls lined with huge academic tomes bound in variously coloured leathers, a room for treatments and prescriptions, and then Maester Luwin’s own chambers are in the turret. It is years since Ned has climbed the steps to the Maester’s Tower, and that was back when it was occupied by old Maester Walys. Then, it was a place filled with the musty scent of age and decay, for when Maester Walys had finally passed away, he had been three weeks shy of his eightieth name day. That had been just before Lyanna had gone and they had been deep into rebellion by the time Maester Luwin had joined the household.

Luwin is a younger man, although still well past middle-age, small and quick, with eyes the colour of marble and a thin crop of grey hair that seems to grow thinner with every year. He climbs the stairs, though, with the vigour of a man half his years, and when he leads Ned into his untidy reading room, he is barely out of breath at all. Closing the door behind them, he turns and offers Ned a seat – a high, tottering stool – which Ned declines. He would rather stand. “What is your counsel?” he asks, going instead to the little diamond-paned window that looks down onto the Godswood.

“My lord, it is a difficult business. You must decide whether to charge Lord Ryswell with this crime, or pardon him.”

“Pardon him?”

“It is an option,” the maester muses.   

Ned sighs, the words ringing in his head. They go against the very core of his soul, how he was raised, and everything he believes is right and true. “Is it really?” he asks, turning back. He wants Luwin to challenge him, to argue for the alternative, so that he can set forth his objections to it, so he can be sure that he has made the right decision. But the maester says nothing, merely watching him with a quiet gaze. “I have not yet had chance to earn the trust and respect of my bannermen. Could I even look any of them in the eye again if I allowed this treason to stand unchallenged?” He pauses. “And then what of the punishment? My father taught me that crimes of this ilk were punishable by death.”

“That is the way of things in the North,” agrees Luwin.

“And that I must swing the sword…” His voice trails away. “He killed the heir to Winterfell, and he swore an oath to serve, not murder, his liege lord,” he states in a low tone. “He must pay for that oath breaking with his life.”

“And Lady Barbrey?”

“Lady Barbrey is a woman. I am sure it would not be considered an ill thing in King’s Landing, but in Winterfell, I will not oversee the killing of women. No, Lady Barbrey’s crime must be paid for by her father. Her punishment will be banishing.”

Maester Luwin smiles a thin smile at him. “My lord, I think you have already chosen your course of action.”

Turning back to the window, Ned stares down at the Godswood, at the tall, straight pines, still dusted with snow, and the skeletal branches of the weirwood, stretching like bony fingers up to the sky. He has to do this, not just for his own sake, or Catelyn’s, but for the fact that he is now the Lord of Winterfell and to tolerate such would be to show a weakness. “I have,” he admits. “I will send riders to arrest him and fetch him to Winterfell. And then he must answer for his crimes. Perform the necessary tests on the contents of the vial found in my rooms to ensure it is moon tea – we must be sure there can be no challenge.”

It takes but a few hours to gather together the necessary men and to send them on their way to the Rills. Ned has it all done quietly. He rides with the men out of the castle and half a league down the King’s Road before he stops them, gathers them together, and gives them their instructions. The men listen, but when Ned finishes, they look at one another uneasily until Donnel Marr, the Captain of the Guards, speaks to them and steadies their nerves. Ned wishes them fair weather and good speed, and then turns to ride back to the castle.

The entire time, his heart beats like a war drum.

Once back within the walls of Winterfell, he goes to the Godswood and sits before the heart tree, praying that he has done the right thing. He feels the doubt eating away at him, like a maggot hidden beneath the decaying skin of a corpse, filling his mind up, so that when Catelyn comes towards him through the trees, he does not see her until she is practically standing before him. “Ned,” she says, in a voice soft with sympathy.

He looks up at her pale face, seeing the concern etched upon it. “Cat,” he says in reply.

“Maester Luwin told me your decision.”

“He did?”

“Yes,” she says.

She goes to the weirwood behind him and looks long at the face carved into the bone-white trunk, studying it as he imagines she might do something that was just out of her understanding. A frown crosses her face. “I think I already know the answer to this,” she says, “but I need to hear you say it anyway… You’re not doing this for me, are you?”

Ned twists on the boulder he is sat upon. “My lady, I am doing this because I have no other choice. Because if I do not, I will lose everything before I even start. It is one thing to willingly sacrifice my own honour for a greater good, but to have someone rip it away from me… No, that will not do. The men of the North will not follow a man who allows his honour to be trampled upon like that. They want their lord to be a figure they can draw strength from, a scale for justice and--”

“It is always about honour…” she sighs. “Sometimes I wish honour would be damned. Life would be simpler without it.”

Frowning, Ned understands her judgement. In many ways, life _would_ be simpler without it. But would it be any better? He feels sure that it would not. “It is a prickly thing,” he agrees. “And it has to be earned, but once earned, it is invaluable.”

Catelyn turns back to him. “I know that,” she says softly. “How long will it be before you have to…?” Silence fills in the missing word in her question and Ned sighs in reply.

“A few weeks, maybe more if he puts up resistance.”

“I’m so sorry, my lord.”

She hangs her head and seems for a moment on the verge of tears. He goes to her and puts his arms around her, enfolding her in an embrace. One hand holds her head against his chest and he presses a kiss into the warm halo of her hair. “The sooner this dreadful business is done, the better,” he says. He finds himself thinking of the aftermath and of both of their positions when all is over with. She will be a widow and he will be a free man. In the midst of all the darkness, that thought suddenly seems like a beacon, glinting.

He wonders if she is thinking the same.

He wants to ask her there and then, but somehow it seems wrong, and so he keeps his silence and simply holds her against him, and she does the same.

It is growing dark when they return to the castle, her arm threaded through his. Maester Luwin stands at the door to the Great Keep, the gathering wind whipping at his gown. He affords their intimate stance a brief look before saying, “My lord… Lady Barbrey has fled.”

Ned stops in his tracks and his hand tightens around Catelyn’s. The news does not surprise him. “When?”

“Just an hour ago. She has left in a hurry and neglected to take many of her possessions,” the maester replies.

Ned looks wryly at Catelyn. “And now the final piece falls into place.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this was a little on the short side compared to previous chapters, but the next scene I want to write from Catelyn's POV, so it had to be finished here. I've also had terrible writer's block this week!


	6. Chapter 6

The day is dull. Dawn has come slowly, like a creeping animal, and now the day is barely brighter than the night. Catelyn has not slept more than a wink all night, her mind weighed down by worries. She had wanted to go to him, but he had taken himself to his own chambers after supper and she had not dared to disturb him. He was troubled, she knew, but she was not sure if he simply wanted to be alone with his thoughts. He had spent most of the afternoon in his Godswood, after all.

She dresses warmly. There is a chill in the air and the sky is heavy with rain, although not a drop has yet fallen. When she goes to the Great Hall to break her fast, the huge room is half empty and a leaden silence hangs over those who sit on the benches. They know what is coming, she thinks.

Ned is in his seat, moving chunks of bacon and turnip around his plate. The tension is rolling off him loudly, like a ship breaking through ice. She looks at him, but he avoids her gaze. His jaw is clenched, his lips thin and tight.

When she goes towards him, he stands suddenly and sets down his cup with a sharp, stabbing gesture. “Ned--”

“I am going to the armoury,” he says. He affords her a brief glance, then departs in a rush of energy, his boots ringing hollowly on the stone floor. Catelyn stands and looks after him, but somehow she knows. He must do this by himself. He _wants_ to do it by himself.

She sits and eats, but the food she places in her mouth is tasteless, and her mind is not in the room but across the courtyard and in the armoury with him. She can almost hear the slow whining pass of the whetstone across that dark blade of Valyrian steel that has been in the Stark family for hundreds of years.

When finally the time comes, and she goes out into the courtyard, she has to push her way through the bodies that have congregated. All faces are turned towards a raised wooden platform that has been erected in the centre. A headsman’s block sits atop it, and a line of men-at-arms dressed in Stark grey and white form an unmoving backdrop. Ned stands waiting as Lord Ryswell is led out by Donnel Marr and two others whose faces she does not recognise. Ryswell has his hands and feet shackled in thick iron cuffs; the sound of the chains as he moves is ponderous.

“Lord Rodrik Ryswell,” announces Marr when they are standing before Ned. “Lord of the Rills and head of House Ryswell.”

Ned nods. “Do you have any final words?” he asks. Ryswell looks at Ned. There is nothing in his eyes but indignant anger, even though his face is wan and weary.

“I see no mercy in you, Stark,” says Ryswell, “and I curse you. Your father promised me a match with your house and then he broke his word and turned his back on me for the sake of his _southron ambitions_.” He spits the last two words with a vehemence that makes Catelyn wince, knowing they are intended to wound her as much as Ned. “I might have forgotten that slight but for your wish to pass Winterfell and the rule of the North to an unborn babe. A babe!” Ryswell’s voice is bitter and hard as it carries around the courtyard. “And a bloody woman.”

His face darkening at the insult, Ned says coldly, “No more. I will hear no more of this. Kneel, my lord.”

For a moment, there is a face off there on the platform, and Ryswell lifts his pointed chin in defiance of Ned’s order, but then Donnel Marr grabs the prisoner by the shoulders and shoves him to his knees, forcing his head onto the block. Ned takes off his gloves and hands them to Vayon Poole, while Ser Rodrik brings forth Ice. The sword makes a high rasping sound as Ned draws it from its scabbard and then sets the point down onto the ground just to the side of Lord Ryswell. Catelyn takes in a deep breath and holds it.     

“Rodrik Ryswell, Lord of the Rills.” Ned’s voice is clear and unwavering, intended to project out across the crowd of people gathered around the platform. “You have been judged guilty of murder and high treason. In the name of Robert of the House Baratheon, the First of his Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms and Protector of the Realm, and by own word, I do sentence you to death.”

As Ned raises the greatsword above his head, Ryswell shouts out, “Be damned, Stark, be damn--”

His words are cut off as Ice swings down. In one clean stroke, the blade severs Lord Ryswell’s head from his body. There is an audible sigh as the head rolls away from the block and blood pumps out in a crimson spread onto the stones. Ned leans for a beat on the sword, and then straightens. To every other set of eyes in the courtyard, he seems calm and in control, but Catelyn can see the quiver in his hands, the darkness in his eyes. It has taken him hard, as she knew it would. 

He stares down at the blade that has taken the life of Lord Ryswell, at the red stain of blood now colouring it, and sighs. Ser Rodrik takes a step towards him and offers to take the sword, but Ned shakes his head. Catelyn sees him swallow and draw in a faltering breath. “No, I would wish to clean it myself.” Nodding, Ser Rodrik hands him a square of thick cloth, dark with oil, and Ned turns to the crowd. For a moment, it seems as if he is about to say something to them, but then he turns away again and steps down from the platform, heading towards the Godswood.

Ser Rodrik crosses his arms and goes to the edge of the platform. Some of the crowd are already beginning to disperse, but the great majority stand still staring at the headless body slumped on the block, or at the spreading pool of blood on the ground. One brazen boy leans forward to get a better look at the head, but receives a scowl from Donnel Marr for his efforts and withdraws.  

“Return to your duties,” Ser Rodrik commands. “There is nothing more to see.”

He summons several of the men-at-arms and they begin the process of cleaning up the courtyard and removing Lord Ryswell’s head and body from the platform. Catelyn stands for a while and watches as they heft them onto a wayn. She knows they will have the body boiled down and the bones returned to the Rillseat for burial – no matter what, all Northmen respect the dead.

But, by the time a team of young boys start dismantling the platform and washing the blood from the stones, it is raining. At first it begins as a light pattering, spitting from the sky so lightly it seems almost to disappear by the time it hits the earth, but soon the drops turn to drizzle, and then to a steady drench. She thinks of Ned in the Godswood – the rain, she knows, will not drive him inside – and hopes he isn’t getting too wet.

Worrying about him will do her no good at all, she knows, but it is hard to turn your thoughts from those you love when you know they are in need. So, to take her mind from him, she goes in search of Maester Luwin.

She finds the maester in his reading room, the door open, head down, pouring over a pile of books. The dull day has forced him to light a candle and it casts a flickering circle of yellow over his cluttered desk, but renders the rest of the room in shadows.

She knocks on the heavy oak and iron door and he looks up at her, a flash of surprise registering on his face. “Lady Catelyn,” he greets, “is there some problem?”

“No, no,” she replies quickly, yet her hands tie themselves together in a knot, and Luwin’s sharp eyes notice the nervous gesture. He gets up from his seat and brings her inside, pushing the door closed behind her.

“Please, my lady, have a seat.” He waves her towards a high-backed armchair seated beside the fire. She hesitates a moment, then sits on the edge of the seat. He waits for her to speak.

“Maester, I… I am worried for him.”

“I had thought you might be. It is only natural. Lord Eddard has just taken a man’s life, and it is not a life taken in battle, or in a duel, but when he has been playing this role he has to play for the sake of his honour and his name.” Luwin offers her a small smile meant to comfort. “He will sit before his heart tree until he has made his peace with his actions, and then he will come back. He may come to you, or he may not, but he will be himself again, in time.”

She nods. She has known the maester only as long as she has been at Winterfell, but he has never been anything less than wise, and she trusts him, and his judgements, unequivocally. She knows he speaks the truth, but even so, the truth does not mean the worry is assuaged. “I never saw Brandon take a life,” she admits.

It seems an unbelievable thing, she thinks, given Brandon’s love of sword-fighting and jousting, and his keenness to turn everything into some kind of competition, but there had simply never been an occasion where it had been necessary for an execution to have been performed within the walls of the castle. The only two beheadings she had heard of him carrying out had been on a pair of deserters from the Night’s Watch, and those had been done many miles from Winterfell just south of the New Gift. Brandon had had days to recover himself on the ride home, and had seemed no different when he rode back through the North Gate than when he had left.

“My lady, forgive me when I say this, but I do not think Lord Brandon would have taken it quite as Lord Eddard has done.”

Catelyn has to agree. “No, mayhaps not… Lord Eddard is somewhat different from his brother – I sometimes forget just how different.”

“Lord Brandon was not without his qualities,” the maester allows. There is little to say to that and so Catelyn does not reply.

In the pause, Luwin closes the book he has been reading and clasps his hands together. A question that Catelyn has had on her mind for the last few weeks tumbles from her mouth, “What happens now?”

Luwin arches his grey brows. “Lord Eddard must oversee the appointment of a new Lord of the Rills, and then he must make sure the word is sent out about Lady Barbrey. After that… he will need to adapt to his new role.” He regards her with a thoughtful gaze. “And now that his betrothal is broken, he must take another wife.”

Catelyn’s heart hiccups at that. Since Ned told her that his charging of Lord Ryswell would mean his betrothal would end, she has hardly dared to think that this would leave them both free to marry. “Do you think--” she begins, but Maester Luwin is quick to interrupt her.

“My lady, I cannot say what is in Lord Eddard’s mind. And I will not raise your hopes when they may be dashed. Lord Eddard will have to think carefully about who he takes to wife. Now that he is Lord of Winterfell, he must broker allegiances with other lords, and there will be an array of highborn girls who would consider his hand a rich prize.”

For a moment she is stunned into silence. The thought of Ned marrying someone other than herself fills her with a jealousy that burns so hot it crackles under her skin. She flushes, and once again the maester picks up on her disquiet. “I am sure Lord Eddard will think to consider you among the choices he may make,” he says softly. His words are meant to soothe her, but instead all they do is set the fire aflame again. She gets hurriedly to her feet and turns away from him, trying to hide her pain. A gust of wind buffets at the window, making it rattle and moan.

Gathering herself, she goes to the door and says, “I really came to give you my thanks. Your advice and service have been much appreciated in these last few weeks, by both me and Lord Eddard.”

Luwin’s face is compassionate, and he ignores her attempt to shift the focus. “I did not mean to upset you with my words, my lady.”

She almost lies in answer, but then thinks that the maester will probably see through her pretence just as he has seen through everything else. “I know… You only speak the truth. I just… I had just hoped that finally there would be a chance to have what has been denied us before.”

“And there may still be,” Luwin tells her calmly. “As I said, I cannot say what Lord Eddard intends. Speak to him when next you see him and know his mind. I am sure he will tell you.”

Night falls again, dark as a shroud. She does not even know if Ned has returned from the Godswood, or whether he is still out there. If he has come back, he has not come to her. She tries not to worry what that means. The rain, at least, has abated, and in the hour before sunset, it has been dry with a mild wind blowing from the south-west. The mood over dinner is sombre, with little laughter and a sense that the entire household is there because they ought to be, and not because they really want to be. Catelyn does not feel hungry, but she forces herself to clear her plate, knowing she needs to eat something to keep up her strength, before deciding to retire to bed.

In her chambers she unlaces her gown and peels it away, before donning her shift and climbing into bed. For a moment, she lies on her back, the sheets cold beneath her, and stares numbly at the ceiling. Her body is so tired it barely feels like her own. Not for the first time, she thinks that she is envious of Ned and his heart tree. She wishes there was somewhere she could go to get ease, but there is no sept here, and she has never felt welcome amongst the pines, oaks and ironwoods of the Winterfell Godswood. It is a dark and foreboding place, not at all like the light, airy garden at Riverrun in which she had played and walked with Lysa and Edmure, and it seems to know when a stranger is in its midst.

It is a truth that, although every man and woman in the castle acknowledges her as ‘my lady’, she has always felt like she does not truly belong.

She thinks then of the babe lost to her and wonders whether birthing an heir would have made her feel more a part of the North. It is hard to imagine, though, when the future seems so uncertain.

Feeling sadness envelop her again, she gathers the furs around her and draws her knees up to her chest and tries to sleep.

It is the middle of night and black as pitch when she wakes with a start, thinking she has heard a noise, and freezes in bed. She listens and then hears the boards creak as someone shifts their weight nearby. “Ned?” she whispers, rolling towards the source of the sound.

There is no reply, but when she hears the squeak and rub of leather being removed, and then the softer sounds of cotton and wool, she knows it is him. The bed sinks then and he crawls in beside her. His body is cool and hard as he wraps his arms around her and tugs her back into him.

For a long moment, he is completely still and silent. “Ned--” she starts, but he cuts her off.

“Shh…”

His hand reaches down to caress her belly, fingers trailing lightly, and then he kisses her neck, nuzzling through her hair to the soft skin beneath. He nips at her ear, then stills again, the motion of his hand slowing until it is simply laid gently upon her. She hears him sigh deeply and she pushes back into him, taking his hand in her own and kissing his knuckles.

After a while, she thinks he has fallen asleep, and she releases a sigh of her own, as some of the tension of the day eases. Lying there in his warm embrace, her heart feels suddenly full and over-spilling. “I love you,” she whispers to herself, and is shocked and surprised to hear him reply,

“I know.”

She tries to twist in his arms at that, to look him in the eye and ask why he had been so quiet as to fool her into thinking that he was sleeping, but he tightens his hold. Slowly, he slips his hand down her belly and between her legs, pushing into the warm folds there and pressing. Catelyn jumps at the spark of arousal that conducts through her. His finger curls into her sex and finds the beginnings of wetness. With a gentle touch, he spreads it over her.

Catelyn’s eyes close as he sets up a rhythm that is steady and maddening at the same time. She wants more pressure, more speed, wants to come quickly and hard, to chase away the worries of the day and the doubts that breed like fungus in her brain, but instead he takes his time, until the sweat is beading on her forehead and she is rocking back into him in sheer frustration. “Ned, Ned,” she pants after the intake of each breath, feeling the coil gathering inside her.  

He says nothing, and tries to stop her now involuntary thrusts against his hand. She can feel the desperation almost at breaking point when he lifts her leg up and shifts the angle of his strokes. That is all it takes. With a high, keening sound, she quivers into her climax, her muscles tensing hard.

She can feel him behind her, his cock resting up against her bottom, but he makes no move to satisfy himself, and instead simply holds onto her. _Brandon would never have done such a thing_ , she thinks. Gradually, his embrace loosens somewhat, and she uses the freedom to turn to face him and look upon his blessed face. She cannot remember when she first saw something more than companionship there, and even though she is sure she sees more in it now, she still asks. “Do you love me too?” She knows she sounds needy and hates herself for it. He is not a man for such open expressions of affection and she knows this, but still she forces his hand. She wants to know for certain – needs to hear him say so aloud – so she can feel reassured and, even if it is only for tonight, loved.

For a long moment, Ned does not respond, then he murmurs, “I’ve been thinking, Cat… What would your father say if I asked for your hand in marriage?”

His face is so terribly solemn that the explosion of joy within her at his words is dampened.

“I, I don’t know for sure,” she replies, working desperately to keep her tone cool despite the fact that her heartbeat is already sounding in her ears. “You would need to ask him.”

Ned looks at her. One hand reaches out to touch her cheekbone. “Yes,” he says distantly, then fingers the strands of her hair that are tucked behind her ear. “And what about you, my lady? What would you say if I asked _you_?”

At that, all Catelyn can do is smile. She thinks back to the nights of quiet talking they shared, back when they were just a distraction for each other, two lost souls looking for someone to fit with. She thinks of how he told her stories of Winterfell’s past and traced the foundations of the castle on her palm, of the sweet, gentle manner of speaking he had that showed her that underneath his sombreness he was the best of men.

And then she realises that there are tears in her eyes and she blinks them back, feeling foolish in her overt display of emotion. She leans in and kisses him. “Yes,” she says simply.

Smiling, he rolls her onto her back and slides his body over hers, and she feels his cock pushing at her; she spreads her legs and he slips inside. Flashes of memories of dimly-lit stables and the night she’d thought might be their last flicker in her head, the guilt that had peppered them both suddenly gone, and in its place is a kind of heady release. Catelyn feels like someone has set her free, and she is bounding across an open moor with the wind in her hair. She cries out as he fills her up.

His mouth closes over hers, stifling the sound she makes, and his tongue laves against hers with delicious slowness as he begins to thrust. Catelyn throws her arms around him, wanting to draw him closer, to feel his weight upon her like a comforting cloak. “Cat,” he murmurs as he drags his hands through her hair, and she thinks how good it is to hear her name issue from his lips in satisfaction and not sadness. She arches her spine up and meets his next thrust half way; he sinks in still deeper as she does. Throwing her head back, she moans when he peppers her throat with kisses.

It is hard to keep her eyes open, but she wants to look at him, and see his face change at the end, and she gets her wish when, just a few moments later, the skin around his eyes crinkles, his mouth tightens into a thin line, and then she feels the flood and spill of him hotly inside her.

His breathing is erratic as he collapses on her chest. He starts to move off her, but she wraps her legs around him and holds him to her, not wanting to lose the feeling of him in her. But there is only so long she can keep him there, and as his cock begins to soften and slip out of her, he rolls onto his back, bringing her with him, and she curls up against him. She pillows her head on his chest and his arm wraps around her, drawing her closer. A sigh empties from Ned’s lungs; for the first time in days, there is something other than pain in it and it makes her smile. “I’ll send a raven to your father in the morning, and invite him to Winterfell. It would be nice to speak to him in person, would it not?”

“It would.” _And it will be nice for him to see me happy for once, too_ , she thinks.    


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little later than usual today... Tumblr has eaten my head this week, I'm afraid, and I literally only finished writing this tonight (which is most unlike me). Still, I hope it doesn't smack of being rushed as a result! Please let me know if you spot any mistakes...
> 
> Oh, and I lied last week. This isn't the final chapter at all! :)

In the three weeks it takes Hoster Tully to ride to Winterfell, they do not lay together. Until Ned has her father’s approval to wed her, he knows he cannot, even though he wants nothing more and she has given him her consent. _We are as good as wed, my father will not object,_ she tells him one night, but he needs to hear it from Hoster Tully’s mouth. For the most part, it works, and they both do a fine job convincing one another that spending their nights wrapped around one another, exploring their bodies in other ways, does not count.

What matters is that she doesn’t get with child again. The rest can be easily hidden, he thinks.

But when the Tully procession is sighted on the King’s Road south of Winterfell, Ned cannot help the surge of relief that floods through him. It has been getting harder and harder to deny himself these last few nights and repeatedly he has felt himself close to casting his resolution to the wind. He breaks off his overseeing of the final few preparations for the evening’s welcoming feast, sends Donnel Marr with an honour guard to greet the visitors, and then goes in search of Catelyn.

He finds her in her chambers, stitching with her handmaids, and her face lights up when he tells her that her father is within sight. She sets down her needlework to rush out into the courtyard and wait. A light snowfall is drifting lazily in the air, but for once, the cold does not seem to bother her. Even when Ned throws his cloak around her shoulders, worried that she is standing in the freezing air covered by nothing more than a shawl, she barely seems to notice.

 _He is glad for her girlish excitement. She must really have missed her family_ , he thinks.

As Lord Hoster rides through the gates, his eyes fall immediately on his daughter. He reins up his horse and dismounts with a wide smile on his face. The hood on his blue cloak is up, hiding his thatch of thick auburn hair, and it is clear he has put on a little weight since Ned saw him last, on the banks of the Trident before they met the Royalist army. Catelyn darts across the courtyard and throws her arms around him. “Cat, my sweetling,” he says as he puts a hand on her hair and embraces her in return.

“Father, it is so good to see you.”

He pulls back and regards her thoughtfully, his hands gripping her shoulders and sweeping the few flakes of snow that have landed there away. “You are looking well, despite all,” he says, then turns to Ned. “And Ned – or should I say, Lord Eddard – what a pleasant surprise it is to see you here holding Winterfell! I always said you were wasted at that distant holdfast, but it seems Winterfell had its eye on you before Robert could snatch you away to join his Kingsguard.”

The Kingsguard rumours had followed Ned home from the south, but it has been a long time since he has thought of them. In truth, Robert had never actually asked him, although Jon Arryn had brought it up over dinner one night just before Ned left to ride north with Lyanna’s bones. Ned had considered the suggestion, but the thought of returning to the capital after what he’d seen and suffered had been too much for him to bear. _No, I made the right decision to come back_ , he thinks, as he shakes Hoster Tully’s hand and then waves him in the direction of the solar. “Welcome to Winterfell, Lord Tully,” he says. “Come, the solar is a good deal warmer than the courtyard.”

“Oh, yes, no doubt. If there’s one thing about the North that surprises me every time, it’s the damnable cold in the air! But, my thanks for your gracious invite nonetheless,” Hoster continues as they begin to walk. “I have been wishing to see my daughter since the news of Lord Brandon’s death reached us. I have worried about her up here all on her own, away from her family.”

Ned says nothing, although inside he winces at the comment. Catelyn, he knows, has been lonely and isolated up here in her marriage to Brandon, but he hopes to show her father that he has no need to worry now. “I am well, Father,” says Cat, as if she has read his mind. “Much better, in truth.” That cheers Ned and he casts a soft smile at her behind her father’s back.

Once in the shelter of the solar, Ned offers Hoster a seat, which he accepts, and then stokes the fire and throws on another log. Catelyn goes to stand beside it, apparently now conscious of the cold that must have bitten through to her bones, and warms her hands before the rejuvenated flames. Ned pours cups of mead for everyone. “It is some years since you have been to Winterfell, is it not, my lord?” he asks.

“It is. I have always enjoyed travelling, but I confess that most of my journeys have taken me south of Riverrun. The one time I dared to cross the Neck was when I met with your lord father to discuss Cat’s betrothal to your brother. Those crannogmen are quite intimidating when you don’t know where they are.”

“They are a formidable force,” agrees Ned, remembering Howland Reed and the magics that he learned of down in Dorne, “and I am glad they are on our side.”

“Indeed. The few who joined us at the Trident were most useful.” Hoster takes a drink, then turns to his daughter. “Cat, my sweet, please will you leave us for a few moments. I believe Lord Eddard has something he wishes to discuss with me…”

Ned glances uncertainly at Catelyn. He has no desire to exclude her from the discussion. “My lady, you may stay for what I have to say.”

“I know. But I will go, as my father bids. Shall I see you both at dinner?”

“Of course,” replies Hoster, smiling at his daughter. “Forgive me, Cat, but I have the feeling that this is a man’s business.”

She nods and then meets Ned’s gaze for a second, silently bidding him good luck, and steps out, closing the door behind her. Ned looks back at Hoster and takes a breath, anticipating the words that are about to be exchanged.“And now, we must get to the matter you have brought me here for, Ned. Because I know you did not have me come all the way from Riverrun just to sit around the fire and recall our old battles. What is it, my lord?”

Hoster Tully’s canniness earned him quite the reputation before the war, and Ned smiles at the realisation that little has changed. “No, I did not,” he admits. “I believe Lady Catelyn has made you aware of the situation we found ourselves in, yes?”

“She has.” Hoster’s voice is cool and collected, and for a moment, Ned wonders just how much Catelyn has told her father, and whether he has heard the truth or the edited for the sake of honour version. He decides not to bring it up unless it needs to be.

“Then you will also be aware that I am now unwed and my betrothal to Lady Barbrey Ryswell has been cast down. In order to secure Winterfell and the Stark line, I must take a wife and have an heir. I know you were most keen to strike the deal with my father that joined our houses, so I am hoping that you will be interested in continuing our association with me.” He fixes Lord Hoster with a stare he hopes appears firm but undemanding. “With your permission, I would wish to wed Lady Catelyn.”

For a long moment, there is no response. Hoster’s expression is neutral, but Ned catches a ghost of a smile cross his lips as he nods slowly. “My lord?” he prompts after the pause has grown indecently long.

“Your offer is a kind and generous one, Lord Eddard, and benefits House Tully greatly. But, I ask you, why are you interested in it? My daughter is now a widow. As Lord of Winterfell, you could have the hand of any blushing young maiden in the Seven Kingdoms should you so wish.”

“That much is true,” agrees Ned readily. “But there is no other I would wish to have.”

Lord Hoster cocks his head a touch to the side. “Is that so? But what of Catelyn?” His tone grows suddenly more introspective. “Understand me, my lord – I do not wish to seem reluctant, but I have some regrets over the choices I made regarding my daughters’ husbands, and I have seen the fruits of my best intentions turn sour. When I brokered the deal with your father, I knew well the benefits both our houses could bring to one another and that was all I considered. But I know my Cat has not been happy in her marriage. Of course I would wish to continue the association between our houses, but I must consider her in this. She is a good and gracious girl and deserves at least that. I mislike the thought of seeing her unhappy again.”

When he has finished, Ned almost laughs aloud, thinking of Catelyn’s confessions of love in the Godswood and in his arms just a few weeks earlier. Lord Hoster imagines his daughter to be unhappy still, and wants to spare her further sadness. “My lord, Catelyn has already agreed to wed me.”

“She has?” He sounds somewhat surprised.

“Yes.”

There is a pause, and the Lord of the Trident smiles. “Well, it seems arrangements have been made already, my lord,” he says with a touch of wryness. "In which case, I see no reason to object." He holds out his hand to Ned. Scrambling to his feet, Ned cannot help the smile that spreads on his face as he takes Hoster’s hand and shakes it firmly.

“I am pleased that you have agreed. As will your daughter, I am sure.”

“And the Tully-Stark alliance lives on.”

Four days later, Ned finds himself standing in the Godswood in the thin light of morning sunshine. A melting frost glistens on the branches and drips rhythmically from the drooping leaves, but his breath still plumes gently in front of him. The sunlight is filtering through the canopy and casting a beautiful pattern of shifting dapples upon the soft, unfrozen ground. It is the finest day they have seen in weeks.

The important men of the household stand in a half circle around the great weirwood – Maester Luwin in his grey robes, Rodrik Cassel, hand upon the hilt of his longsword, and Donnel Marr, flanked by two men-at-arms. Ned is at the centre of them, garbed in his finest, but the collar of his doublet is itching him, and there is something fluttering like a nervous bird in his belly.

Above him, the heart tree soars, and the face carved in its white bark watches solemnly. He never thought he would wed within the sight of the Old Gods. It has long been custom for the husband to travel to the bride’s home to be wed, and he always imagined that this moment would find him stood in a southron sept with the scent of incense in the air and the sound of chanting all around, but for some reason, Catelyn was happy with the Winterfell Godswood. He does not know why – she would not explain. Whatever the reason, he looks up at the red leaves and thinks how glad he is that he is here.

When Hoster Tully appears from out of the wisps of fog still curling and shifting about the bases of the trees, the fluttering in his belly intensifies. Catelyn is on his arm, her hair the colour of the sunset the night before, dressed in a grey gown with a white fur trim. _The Stark colours_ , he thinks. They had discussed whether or not she should wear Tully blue and red, but she has been Catelyn Stark these last two years, and so it was decided grey and white would be more appropriate. He will put his cloak around her, but her colours and her name will not change again.

Her face is a good deal calmer than he thinks his own must seem, and there is even the light of laughter in her eyes. He wonders if she looked the same before she wed Brandon at Riverrun, before her anticipation turned to sour disappointment, or whether she felt the same nerves he is feeling now. He clears his throat. “Who comes?” he calls. “Who comes before the Gods?”

Hoster Tully brings his daughter before the heart tree and answers, “Catelyn Stark, born of House Tully of Riverrun, comes here to be wed. She comes to beg the blessings of the gods. Who comes to claim her?”

“I do,” says Ned, but his voice catches in his throat and he has to repeat himself. “I do. Eddard of House Stark, Lord of Winterfell. I claim her. Who gives her?”

“Hoster of House Tully, Lord of Riverrun and Lord Paramount of the Trident, her father.” Hoster turns to his daughter and smiles. There is a look of sentimentality about him now that betrays his formal words and he reaches up to tuck a strand of loose hair that has fallen from her Northern-style braid behind her ear. “Lady Catelyn, will you take this man?”

Catelyn nods. “I will take this man.” Her eyes lift up to Ned’s and they are bright with joy. Ned almost laughs to see them.

Her father steps back, leaving Catelyn standing by Ned’s side. The fussing septon by the name of Chayle who had been brought hurriedly from White Harbor the day before comes forward and bids them to raise their hands. Ned takes her hand in his and she gives it a gentle squeeze, her eyes never leaving his. Speaking a prayer aloud, Chayle binds their hands together with linen, and then steps back. All the while the heart tree stares down at them, silent and still. Ned drops to his knees and Catelyn does the same. He bows his head, closes his eyes and prays for a long life together, a happy marriage, and a brood of healthy children.  

When he is done, he lifts his head and finds her waiting for him. Together, they rise, and the Septon peels away the linen that he wrapped around their hands, freeing them for movement once again. Ned reaches up and unclasps the direwolf pin that holds his cloak to him, releasing it. There is the barest touch of a tremble in his hands as he swings it around her shoulders and fastens the pin again.

He steps back. Catelyn’s smile is wide. “My lady wife,” he announces to the gathered men of Winterfell. “Catelyn.”

A low rumble of approval sounds out from the semi-circle and Ned reaches for his wife’s hand, to lead her from the Godswood.

The night is frosty once again, but the Great Hall is afire. Torches line the walls, and a fire is blazing in the huge hearth. For the first time in weeks, the mood amongst the men of the household is bullish and high spirited. Cups clash together, laughter echoes off the high ceiling and a fiddler plays – it is the kind of occasion the Great Hall was built for. Ned sits in the high seat of the Starks of Winterfell and watches the frivolities. He has never been one for feasts and celebrations, and despite the occasion, this one is no exception. There are but a hundred and fifty in the room, but to him it still seems crowded, and he can feel the oppressive heat weighting down his every breath. Beside him, Catelyn has fallen quiet and her fingers are toying with the stem of her wine cup. The heat doesn’t seem to be bothering her like it is him, but she has been nervous since they cleared away the plates, no doubt thinking of the great ritual of the bedding that is to come. She is not a maiden, but the thought of being hustled and stripped down to her smallclothes is surely an intimidating one. He wants to tell her that he will not have her embarrassed, but when he looks to her, she looks away.

Finally, she speaks. “Ned, please excuse me a moment, I am going outside for a little air.” He frowns and tilts his head in question, hoping that she is not feeling unwell. She detects his concern and reassures him. “I am well, and I won’t be long. I just—I never thought I’d say it, but I have need of some cooler air.”

Ned nods, offering her a smile, and watches as she climbs to her feet and slips out of the hall. Once she is gone, he turns back to the merrymaking. Even Donnel Marr’s serious pock-marked face is laughing as he chats amiably with one of the guards under his command. Jory Cassell is challenging Hullen to a drinking match and several of the serving girls are watching them both and whispering conspiratorially in the corner. A piper drifts amongst the tables. He takes another drink of wine, then turns to join the conversation Hoster Tully is having with Ser Rodrik, but neither man seems to even notice him there. He wants to get up and follow Catelyn out of the room, to taste the cool night himself, but he knows they cannot both be seen to leave.

Sinking a little lower in his chair, he drifts back to watching Winterfell’s men and women as they move about the room and raise their cups in toasts, and waits.

The concern does not begin for some time, but when she does not return, he grows restive. It is not like Catelyn to neglect what she thinks is her duty. He glances at Hoster, but he is still deep in conversation. Slowly, he gets to his feet. Not a soul seems to notice as he steps down from the dais and heads towards the doors. When he breaks through the doors, the cold air gushes over him like a torrent and he stops and looks about.

The courtyard is empty, the darkness filling it like spilled ink. Behind him, the doors swing closed under their own weight and the music and voices and laughter dulls. “Cat?” he calls quietly. _Where can she be?_

He glances up at the keep, wondering if perhaps she has sneaked back to her chambers, but he can see the window of her room from here and there are no candles burning within it. A horse whinnies. _The stables_ , he thinks, _to see her mare_ , and starts across the courtyard towards them.

It is cool and quieter still within the stables, the smells of straw and horse and leather combined into a thick perfume. He has taken a torch from the outside wall and now, as he shines it about, the shadows lurch and flicker. He sees his own destrier half asleep in a stall, the weight held off one back foot, but there are no other animals visible. No heads peer over the gates and there is nobody here. He is about to turn and leave, when suddenly he hears a sound.

It is not the sound of any animal, either. It is a quiet intake of breath, barely even noticeable had he not been listening.

He turns and holds the torch aloft. Something tells him not to say a word, and instead he stands still in the doorway, squinting into the darkness. Out of instinct, his hand goes to his belt, but he remembers then that he is not wearing his sword. It hadn’t seemed appropriate to attend his wedding armed, and so he had left his dirk and longsword hanging in his chambers that morning. After all, he was in Winterfell, and what danger could there be within these walls? His fingers adjust their grip on the torch. Slowly, he moves down the aisle, his eyes flicking left and right. The horses are near the backs of their stalls, but as he passes, he sees the white of an eye follow him and the stamp of a nervous hoof on the ground.

Her voice, when he hears it, is strangled and sharp and cut off as soon as it sounds. “Ned!”

He spins on the spot and, in the shadows of an empty stall, sees her standing. One hand reaches for him vainly, while her head is tilted slightly back, and the glint of steel is at her throat.

_Oh Gods!_

He thrusts the torch forward and the light reveals the figure behind her. Black-haired and pale of face, Barbrey Ryswell has a hold of Catelyn by her braid. In her other hand, there is a dagger, and it is pressed hard against the skin of Catelyn’s neck.  

“Don’t come any closer.”

Ned halts.

“Don’t come any closer,” she repeats. “Or I’ll do it, I swear. I’ll cut her throat.”

Catelyn’s eyes are wide and white and filled with fear. He can see the glimmer of the torch’s light shining on the mirror steel of the blade. “Barbrey,” he says. “What are you doing?” For some reason, unknown to him, his voice sounds calmer than it has any right to be.

“Righting a wrong,” she hisses. Her skin is waxy with dirt, and her hair is lank and greasy. She is breathing hard, her hand trembling slightly.

Ned frowns. “A wrong? What you and your father did was wrong. And this is hardly redeeming your honour…” He tries to swallow, but his throat does not cooperate. “Put down your weapon, and I promise that no-one will harm you.”

“I have no intention of anyone harming me.”

“You are in my castle, my lady. One shout from me and half a hundred men will come running.”

“One shout from you, and I will kill her.”

Ned stares at her. “You would do that, truly? It is one thing to kill an unborn babe, but quite another to slit the throat of a woman standing before you, alive and breathing. It will be her blood you spill.” He takes a step forward, trying to ignore the pleading look in Catelyn’s eyes. “Look at her, Barbrey.”

There is the briefest moment when Barbrey’s eyes flicker down to the blade, then she snarls and glares at him, yanking back on Catelyn’s braid. The dagger cuts in and Catelyn squeals as the edge digs into her skin. Blood oozes up and a thin line trickles down her throat and breast to stain the top of her gown. “Be quiet!” Barbrey warns. She gives another tug on the braid.

And then there are footsteps, and from behind him, Ned hears the rasping sound of two swords being drawn. “Put down your weapon,” says the firm voice of Donnel Marr. Ser Rodrik is with him, blade in hand.

Barbrey glances quickly at the two men who come alongside Ned. She seems to see that the balance of power has shifted and she looks out of the stall and towards the open door. Ned wonders if she is sizing up the chances she has of making it out. She has her back to the wall and the only way out is through them. She grits her teeth. “I will kill her if anybody comes any closer.” She glares at Ned, then spits, “You have banished me! Taken my home, my father, my _whole life_ … and you expect me to just slink quietly away? Stand back!”

She shifts a little, and the dagger bites again into Catelyn’s throat.

Everyone is looking at him, he realises – Donnel for instruction, Catelyn in desperation, Barbrey in anger. His heart is beating wildly, but he knows he must seem to be in control. He needs to find the way out of this, needs to get back to thinking like a soldier and not like a lord. So he breaths in and studies the threat before him. He follows the line of Barbrey’s stiff arm to the braid she has hold of. There is a gap between Catelyn’s back and the hand that has a hold of the braid. It is barely more than a couple of inches, but it is there, and it is the weakest point.

A man with any degree of skill or knowledge would have held his victim by the arm or shoulder, keeping his body flush with the captive’s back, but Barbrey Ryswell is no soldier and nor is she a practiced assassin. Ned can see the stable wall through the gap. It’s big enough for a dagger to slip in.  

“What do you want from me?” he asks, in an attempt to keep the tension holding steady. “I’ll give you what you want, if you will let her go.” Begging is not beneath him, he thinks, so he adds, “Please.”

Barbrey’s mouth twitches. “I want my freedom back.”

“And then what?” He flashes a look at Donnel, then another at Ser Rodrik, hoping they can read the intention in his eyes. It is risky, he knows, but there is no other way that he can see. “What will you do then?” He takes a step up closer to Donnel. The captain of the guards is left-handed, so his longsword hangs from his right side, while his dirk is on his left. With his sword drawn, his arm half hides the dirk.

“Drop your weapon,” Ser Rodrik tells Barbrey and just as Ned takes another step, he moves forward a pace and brandishes his sword at Barbrey. Her eyes shift from Ned for a second to look at Ser Rodrik as he thrusts his sword towards her, and in the moment’s distraction, Ned slips his fingers around Donnel Marr’s dirk and draws it, sliding it immediately into his sleeve and out of sight.

“No, it is you who will do as I say!” says Barbrey.

“Catelyn,” Ned says then, and takes a step towards her. “Look at me.” Her eyes go to him in an instant. There is just over an arm’s reach between them now, but it is more than he can safely lunge in one movement. He needs her to pull forward as far as she can. “You looked so beautiful today,” he tells her softly. “When I saw you… coming _towards_ me… in the sunlight, your _hair_ looked as if it had caught fire.”

He looks for the slightest movement, anything, his eyes fixed on hers, and then there is the flicker of comprehension and she rolls her head back, as if she is fighting against the grip that holds her. The shifting of her head brings her body forwards half a pace and widens the gap between her and Barbrey.

Ned lunges.

The moment seems to hang, then suddenly he is thrusting the dagger into the gap and slicing through Catelyn’s braid. In the very same instant, he grabs her by the wrist and pulls her down and away, and she stumbles and falls into Ser Rodrik’s arms.

Barbrey howls. She looks down at the severed braid she holds in her hand, then wheels to the side and shoves frantically past Ned, making a run for it, but as she does, Donnel Marr brings up his sword and she races right onto the blade.

With a wet slide, it sinks into her belly. She freezes and cries out. Her eyes go wide as she looks down at the sword buried deep into her. Donnel draws the blade away and Barbrey Ryswell crumples to the floor like a sawdust doll.  


	8. Chapter 8

There is silence.

Ned stares at the body of Barbrey Ryswell. Her legs are twisted beneath her and her hand still clutches vainly at her belly, the blood still spreading even as he stares. Her eyes are open in shock but there is no light in them. She is dead. Donnel Marr’s sword hand is shaking and he is watching the blood glistening along the length of his blade with a kind of hollow horror. Slowly, Ned takes the weapon from his fingers and sets it on the floor. Ser Rodrik has a hold of Catelyn. He tries to stop her turning in his arms to look at what has happened, but she breaks free and as her gaze falls on the body lying in the straw, a shocked gasp gushes from her mouth.

“My lady, no,” says Ned and goes to her. “Don’t look on it.”

“I didn’t see what happened,” she murmurs as he takes up her hands.

“It was not meant to happen. She ran onto Donnel’s blade.”

“Gods…” Catelyn glances at the captain of the guards, whose pale face betrays his own shock. Two more men have come into the stables now and have stopped in their tracks to stare at the scene before them. Their presence reminds Ned that he must control the situation, so he turns to them and calls them to him, giving them orders to stand guard outside the stables and not permit anyone to enter without permission.

He turns back to Catelyn. One finger crooks under her chin and he lifts gently, revealing the long, thin gash where the dagger has cut into her throat. The wound is weeping blood. “You are hurt,” he says, frowning. “Ser Rodrik, fetch Maester Luwin. This needs to be tended to.”

“Ned, I am fine.”

“This needs cleaning and bandaging, my lady.”

Catelyn does not argue further, and allows him to guide her away from the body and seat her on a bale of straw. He kneels before her. Her drastically shortened hair has unwoven itself from the remains of her braid, and as her head droops a little, it falls forward. Reaching up, he runs his hands through it and tucks it behind her ears. It is a small price to pay, he thinks, as he beholds her. For a moment, he feels desperately protective of her, even though he knows that she would mislike it.   

Maester Luwin appears in the door then and comes to Ned’s side. His eyes flicker over the scene in the stables, and to Ned’s relief, he does not ask what has happened. Instead, he simply drops to his knees and bids Catelyn to lift her head so he can examine the wound.

A few moments later, he gets to his feet and smiles gently at her. “My lady, if you would come with me to my turret, I will tend to your wound and dress it properly.”

Catelyn looks at the maester, then at Ned, then nods. He helps her to her feet. Together they walk across the courtyard and towards the maester’s turret, her arm threaded through his. A crowd has gathered outside the courtyard, some holding torches, others simply standing and talking in hushed tones. Hoster Tully breaks through them and calls to Ned, who stops in his stride and turns to face Catelyn’s father.  Hoster’s eyes shift in horror over Catelyn’s butchered hair and the dribbles of bright blood on the neckline of her gown and his face darkens. “Cat, my sweet, what has happened here?” he demands.

“I was in the stables with my mare, and Barbrey Ryswell came up behind me and grabbed me and put a knife to my throat. But Ned found me and then so did Ser Rodrik and Donnel, and Ned…” Her voice fades a touch. He feels her fingers tighten on his forearm. “Ned saved me.”

Hoster Tully looks from his daughter to Ned and back again. “Gods be good,” he whispers. “And there was I drinking and dining… I thought only that you two love birds had slipped off to have the rest of the evening to yourselves. My grateful thanks, Lord Eddard; I am forever in your debt.”

“Lady Barbrey is dead, my lord,” explains Ned.

“Dead?”

“In the chaos of freeing Lady Catelyn, she tried to run, but she impaled herself on Donnel Marr’s raised blade.”

Frowning, Hoster glances towards the stables. “Mayhaps that is for the best. Had she escaped, we would have needed to send men after her.” He shakes his head. “Are you hurt, my sweet?”   

“A little,” admits Catelyn, “but is it nothing to be concerned about. Maester Luwin is going to tend to the cut.”

“Thank the Gods.”

“You may come with us if you would wish it, my lord,” says Luwin, but Hoster shakes his head.

“No, no, I would only get in the way. I am just pleased you are not badly hurt.”

The maester nods and then continues on towards his turret. The stair is only wide enough for one, so Catelyn follows behind him and Ned brings up the rear. Once they are inside the room he uses for treatment, Luwin busies himself lighting candles, and in a few moments, the room is filled with flickering yellow light. He gestures to a high-backed chair before the fire and Catelyn sits. “Now then, my lady, I shall need for you to hold very still while I inspect the wound. Can you do that? It may hurt.”

Nodding, Catelyn tilts her head back a touch to allow him full access to the injury. Her eyes seek out Ned, and he comes to stand beside her, taking one of her hands in his and squeezing gently as Luwin begins to explore the wound. He stems the bleeding with a little pressure, cleans it carefully, then applies a slightly sticky salve to it and presses the edges together, before beginning to roll a fresh linen bandage around her throat. “This will keep the wound clean,” he explains, “and guard against infection. The cut is not particularly deep, but I’m afraid to say that it stretches near all the way around your neck, my lady, and there may well be a scar.”

“It does not matter. I am just glad that is all there will be.”

The maester ties the bandage in place, then stands back and asks, “Is that comfortable, or too tight?”

“It is fine. Thank you, Maester, I am grateful.”

Luwin nods and smiles. “And now I would recommend a quiet night for both of you. Doubtless the effects of the incident will be felt in due course. You may neither of you have a good night’s sleep. I will ask the kitchens to prepare some warm milk with a drop of camomile in it so as to soothe you.”                   

Ned helps Catelyn to her feet and thanks the maester himself, thinking that he must make sure that he takes the time to reward him for his leal service. “Come, my lady,” he says, “let’s to bed. It is late and I think the maester has the right of it.”

“Yes,” Catelyn says distantly, and he holds the door for her as she walks slowly out.

His chambers are cold and so he kneels and quickly sets about lighting a fire to ease her shivering while she sits on the edge of the bed and rubs her thighs to try to warm herself. When he glances up at her she looks so small and he finds himself thinking how strange that seems. He has never thought of her as small. “Pull the furs from the bed,” he tells her softly. “The fire will take a little while to get going.” She nods and does just that, wrapping herself in a huge patchwork pelt of grey fox fur so that only her head is visible.

He sits on his heels and watches the flames catch, before throwing on some peat sods and standing. When he turns around, she is still sitting motionless, but he realises that she is shaking and her face has gone deathly pale. “Cat?” He goes to her, frowning. Their eyes meet.

And then she is crying, great wracking sobs that seem to come from somewhere down inside her and deny the strength he has so long admired in her. “Gods, Ned, I’m… I’m sorry… I… I don’t even know why I’m… why I’m crying!” She hiccups out the words and Ned feels his heart wrench as he looks at her. For a moment, he doesn’t have the first idea what he should do, but then she grabs him and pulls him to her and he is spared the awkwardness.

“Shh…” he tells her, wrapping his arms around her and holding her to him.

Her whole body shakes uncontrollably, but he doesn’t move or step away, instead he just holds her and holds her until she finally sniffs the last tears back and pulls away, looking at him with red-rimmed eyes and wet lashes. Even in tears, he thinks how beautiful she truly is. He uses his thumbs to wipe her cheeks dry, then kisses her forehead. The fox fur is still around her shoulders and he lifts it off. Without a word, he eases her blood-stained dress from her and helps her climb into the bed. She nestles down in the pillows while he takes off his own garb, watching him.

He tries not to feel desire at her unwavering gaze and the sight of her nakedness. It is not appropriate, he tells himself. But as he removes his breeches he realises that he is half hard already and in embarrassment he turns around to show her his back.

“Don’t.”

He hears her voice from the bed as his thumbs curl into the waistband of his smallclothes. Stalling, he swallows the lump that has formed in his throat. “My lady?”

“Don’t turn away,” she murmurs.

His shoulders twitch. He looks down at himself, cursing his body’s weak response, and slowly turns back to her. “My lady, I am sorry. I… I cannot help myself.” He shakes his head and prays that she will not take offence. The last thing she needs is to think that he expects her to lay with him, after what she has experienced. A marriage does not need to be consummated on the first night – they have the rest of their lives for that. “You are… very tempting… lying there.”

Catelyn smiles a ghost of a smile at him. Amid the furs and pillows, he can still see the angle of her collarbone, the pale skin on her upper arm and the dip of her waist and curve of her hip. A rose-coloured nipple is just visible too. Heat grows in him. “Am I?” she asks. Her voice is barely more than a whisper.

He swallows again and nods. “But you have been through much and more tonight, my lady,” he tells her.

She says nothing to that, but she shifts a little so that there is an expanse of empty bed before her. Ned stares at it, so his eyes cannot continue to rove along her figure. “Mayhaps I want to forget it, then.” She pats the space. “Come to me.”

Indecision grips him, but then he looks at her solemn face and her long fingers spread out on the sheet and thinks that he is a fool if he turns away from her because his body desires her. He pushes his smallclothes down his legs and kicks them off, and slides in alongside her. She throws the blanket and fox fur over them both then he feels her hand on his waist, and the trail it follows up over the dimples of his ribs. It rests above his heart for a moment, then slips down and curls around his length. Ned gasps.

“Cat, I… you do not have to.”

“I know,” she says. Her hand sets up a slow, delicious caress and, involuntarily, his eyes shutter closed. He grunts when she slides a thumb and forefinger along him, up to the tip, and then runs idly around the rim. With every scrap of patience he possesses, he keeps himself from thrusting into her hand and instead leans in and kisses her.               

But, when she opens her mouth to him, he cannot keep himself in check any longer and he rolls atop her and pushes his hands through her hair. It feels strange not to have the great lengths tying themselves around his fingers, but no less enchanting. Looking down at her, he says a silent prayer that she was not badly hurt and wonders what he would have done had Donnel’s blade not been sharp and Barbrey had made good of her promise.

It does not do to think of it, he thinks. She is safe, and in his arms, and that is how it shall stay.

He kisses her deeply, tongue laving in her mouth. Her injury makes her movement a little awkward, so he shifts for her and sighs against her lips. With a steady motion, he pushes inside her, finding her wet and ready, and thinks that there is nothing that could be greater than this.

“Ned,” she murmurs as he starts to move, and he looks down at her again and studies the lines of her face, the arch of her brows, the blue, blue eyes, and the pink bow of her lips.

It is not long before he feels her clenching around him and then the soft cries that urge free from her as she comes. He smiles at her tight-closed eyes and the serious scrunch of her face. He strokes into her again, and again, and then feels the gathering accelerate inside him. The final few clutches of her climax drive him over the edge and he grunts into her hairline at the spiralling pleasure, collapsing onto her chest as he finishes.

He rolls away and lies on his back, breathing hard and staring up at the ceiling. He feels her shift and curl against him, one hand landing in a fist above his heart. Time shifts onwards as he slowly gathers himself once again. He sighs. His heart feels full of something extraordinary and desperate and there is an urge to articulate the sensation, but the words he knows he should probably say stick in his throat, not through a lack of desire to say them, but because they are strangers to him. Instead, he wraps his arm around her, and his hand encases the ball of her shoulder. He presses a kiss into the soft nest of her hair and breathes deep of the scent he finds there. “Goodnight, my love,” he says.

“Mmm…” she replies.

She is asleep before he realises, but he stays awake for a long time after he hears her breathing turn deep and slow before he allows himself to drift away as well.

Six weeks later she comes to him while he is in his solar signing papers. He knows it is her by her gentle knock and he bids her welcome, smiling as she pushes the door open and comes inside. The wound on her neck is all but healed, although there is bright pink scar tissue showing where the blade cut in. Sometimes she wears a high neck or a scarf to cover it, but for the most part it doesn’t seem to bother her. My war wound, he has heard her call it when it is noticed.

She has seemed a good deal happier since they sent Barbrey Ryswell’s body back to the Rillseat for burial and he chose one of Lord Rodrik’s cousins as the new Lord of the Rills, as if drawing a line under the whole horrible affair has given her some peace. In fact, near enough everyone who has seen her has commented on her smile and her more confident stance and Ned has been cheered by that. She has spent too long living a shadow of a life.

It seems now as if everything is something from which she can take joy. Even the bringing of his bastard boy to Winterfell has not dimmed her newfound happiness. Ned knows that he will hold the image of the toddler as he thrust his chubby hand up to her in the courtyard and the way she had knelt to introduce herself to him forever in his head.

Her hair is growing back already, but she has had it cut neatly into a style that brushes just past her jaw, braiding the side sections most mornings to keep them out of her face. It makes her look younger somehow, he thinks, or mayhaps it is simply the smile on her lips that does that.

 “What is it, my lady?” he asks her. Her fingers knot together with a degree of nervousness, then she goes around the desk he sits at so she standing right before him. Twisting in his seat, he frowns at her in question.

Catelyn pauses. “This all seems very strange,” she says, glancing around the room before coming back to look at him. “It is not so very long ago I came to you with news that I was with child and your face was like a frozen river… I wonder what it will look like now.”

Ned stares at her, uncomprehending, then the puzzle behind her words clicks into place. He studies her face to be sure. “Are you—?”

“—with child?” she concludes for him and smiles and then nods.

His memory goes flying back to that morning in this very room when she first told him she was carrying his child and an intoxicating joy overtakes him. He chuckles and stands and takes her hands in his. “That is wonderful news, my love,” he tells her. “Are you well?”

“I am well,” she confirms. “I have told Maester Luwin already. I wanted to be sure before I told you.”

Ned nods. His eyes fall to her belly, still flat, and he thinks how different it will be this time.  

 

The End.      

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to everyone who has left kudos, bookmarked and commented on this. It's been fun to write and an interesting adventure in AU that I was sure I would never do! Biggest thanks, though, to SomeEnchantedEve, for letting me play in her universe. :)


End file.
